


Every Broken Thing

by Aerowax26



Series: False Twilight [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Sex, Anxiety Attacks, Darkfic, Depression, Dissociation, Drowning, Dubious Consent, Eating Disorders, Explicit Language, Gen, Hallucinations, Hypersexuality, Isolation, Knifeplay, M/M, Masturbation, Nightmares, One Night Stands, Oral Sex, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Reenactment Behaviours, Self Confidence Issues, Self Destructive Behaviour, Self-Harm, Sex Addiction, Sexual Assault, Sexual Content, Suicidal Thoughts, Synesthesia, Trauma and recovery, Voyeurism, imposter syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 11:55:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 53,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13123218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aerowax26/pseuds/Aerowax26
Summary: With Noctis gone, a broken-hearted and traumatized Prompto struggles to understand himself, the aftermath of Ardyn's violence, and the fire burning in his gut that he can't seem to put out.Set during the time-skip/WoR.  Darkfic. Trauma.  Aftermath.





	1. Prologue/Poison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read the tags. They're there for a reason and some of the content is explicit. This is a mature work with a lot of dark, ugly things in it, so please use caution if you are a minor and / or you are triggered by any of the tags above. 
> 
> I've taken care to tag this appropriately, but I may have missed a thing or two. Let me know if I did and I'll add it. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!

* * *

 

_**How delightful, to ruin something so beautiful...** _

_Everything's fine now._

_I'm okay._

Prompto stood under the stream of a hot shower, somewhere deep in the bowels of Zegnatus Keep, his body an impressionist painting of bruises and a cacophony of aches. Traces of blood swirled down the drain, some his, some not, and it tinged the lather from his rinsed shampoo a dingy pink.

_Everything's fine._

He scrubbed once, twice, three times, until his skin hurt and a few of his wounds opened up and started to bleed. He needed to be purged, needed the poison out of his veins, and the feel and smell of _him_ off his skin. No matter how hard he scrubbed, it didn't go away.

 _I'm okay_.

"Prompto? You fall asleep in there?" Noctis called.

"Be out in a jiffy!" Prompto shouted back.

Gods. He sounded so fake, so forced.

He turned off the water and wrapped himself in a towel, warm for the first time in days, maybe weeks, months, a lifetime. The fabric of the towel, laundered too many times to be soft anymore, chafed his already tender skin as he dried himself off. Better that than the phantom sensations that crawled all over him like insects.

 _Okay_.

Prompto emerged from the shower, the towel wrapped around his waist, and pawed through his bag for clean clothes and a comb.

At the sharp intake of breath behind him, Prompto turned around to face Noctis.

Noctis' normally sleepy eyes widened at the bruised ribs and bite marks, crescent moon shaped gouges and dark fingerprints above Prompto's hips. Too tired to be ashamed, Prompto watched his friend's expression shift from horror to sorrow to fierce anger before it finally settled on something like compassion.

"You really put up a fight, didn't you?"

"Wasn't going down without one," Prompto said. He took care to keep his tone light. "Gotta help this guy I know fulfill his destiny, you know?"

Noctis didn't buy it and Prompto's smile fell away.

"What did he do to you?"

Prompto looked away. "... a lot."

Too much. And not enough.

**_How delightful..._ **

Easier to remember now why he wanted to live with Noctis here in front of him. Easier to remember where he started and how far he'd come and why giving up was not an option.

Noctis stood and dug through his own bag. From it, he retrieved an elixir and offered it, shy and guilty and beautiful in his humility.

"Thanks, buddy."

Prompto accepted the vial, opened it, swallowed it down and waited for his rough edges to smooth out, for the worst of the aches to fade. Relief was swift, but not complete. Easier to breathe now, without his ribs on fire, but it didn't do anything to quiet the noise in his head or take away the presence of something _other_ slithering under his skin.

**_Let me hear you scream..._ **

Without thought, he rubbed his arms to subdue the itch he couldn't scratch. If he could reach the source, he would scratch until he bled.

Noctis reached out and took Prompto's wrist, the one with the codeprint, and brushed his fingertips against the mark. Prompto flinched. The skin remained sensitive and sore and bruised all the way to the bone.

He fought hard. Even when it didn't make sense to fight. Even when escape was not an option. A third of his injuries were his own fault for not lying down and taking it.

"You know," Noctis said, "it actually looks kinda badass."

"Don't," Prompto said. He looked away and pulled his wrist free. "I know you're just kidding around, but..."

"Sorry."

He closed his eyes. Ardyn's mocking face sputtered to life behind his lids and he opened them a second later, sure it was real. He was bone tired, but he didn't know if he'd ever sleep again.

_**scream my name...** _

"Hey," Noctis said and stepped forward. He lay a hand against Prompto's jaw and peered into his eyes. Prompto jumped at the contact. "Where'd you just go? Looked like your soul left your body for a second."

The attempt at humor fell flat. Prompto wasn't entirely sure he had a soul, and if he did, he wasn't sure it belonged to him anymore.

Prompto answered him with a kiss, a soft pass of his lips against Noctis', a desperate attempt to feel something besides the bloody ache in his chest and Ardyn's hands all over him.

_**This is going to hurt...** _

In the five years they'd been friends, Prompto never mustered the courage to do this but he never wanted anything more. It was almost _not_ a kiss, but that light touch sent a sizzle along Prompto's nerve endings and a spike of need so powerful, it wrenched a whimper from his throat.

Noctis pulled back with a sharp gasp, but his hand remained where it was. Prompto couldn't look him in the eye, his feelings made known and denied.

"Prompto?"

Prompto's chest rose and fell as anxiety swelled and twined with shame. What was he doing anyway? What was he doing? What kind of sicko wanted sex after being raped? What kind of masochist?

"I'm sorry," he choked out. "I needed... I'm sorry."

_I needed you._

Noctis laid his other hand against Prompto's burning cheek and leaned his forehead to Prompto's. The tears Prompto held back all day spilled over and he cried bitterly over his lost innocence and his brutalized and violated body. If he let Ardyn fuck him, it was only for the sake of survival.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Noctis whispered. "You don't have anything to be sorry for."

"Don't be mad," Prompto whined. "Please don't be mad."

"I'm not mad..."

Prompto kept crying. It felt like he would never stop.

"Come here," Noctis said. Gentle hands drew him forward into a tight hug. "You're okay."

_I'm okay._

_**….ruin something beautiful**_

Prompto melted into the embrace and rested his head against Noctis' shoulder, hacking and sobbing and needing this so bad, bawling half because it felt so damn good to be touched with kindness, by someone who would never deliberately hurt him.

_Everything's fine now._

Prompto was so lost in his tears, he was scarcely aware of it when Noctis drew him into the bunk and seated him in his lap. Noctis kissed his temple and curled a hand around the back of his head to cradle him against his chest, so tender and loving it almost hurt. Nobody, not once in his life had ever held him like this and it brought on a fresh round of tears, a waterfall, a catharsis, a purging of every pain he'd ever been subjected to.

_It should have been you._

His sobs gave way to sniffles, then to slow, calming breaths and the occasional hiccuping gasp. Noctis' hands soothed him and kept the monsters at bay. His fingers combed through damp hair and glided over his cheek and bare shoulder and Prompto wanted more. He wanted Noctis to touch him everywhere. He wanted Noctis to erase the feel of Ardyn's hands on him. To wash the taste of Ardyn from his mouth.

"Better?" Noctis asked.

Prompto lifted his head, opened his mouth to speak, but not a word came out.

It didn't even matter. Noctis claimed his lips with a tender kiss that was oh-so unlike Ardyn's forced invasions they scarcely seemed the same thing. Prompto didn't hesitate to kiss back. He slipped his arms around Noctis' neck and let it dull the pain. Noctis was kissing him back, and gods it was _everything_.

Mindless with the need to kill bad memories and replace them with better ones, he tugged at Noctis' shirt and lifted it over his head. His body trilled at the press of skin to skin, at the love he felt in Noctis' careful touches, at the sweetness in Noctis' kiss.

So much better.

"I don't want to hurt you," Noctis said against his lips. Light fingers brushed over the deepest, blackest bruise on his side. "Or make it worse."

"Just watch the nose," Prompto said. "The rest looks worse than it is."

It wasn't really true, but the worst was over. Pain be damned, he needed this.

Noctis hesitated.

"Please don't stop," Prompto said, his voice small and pitiful. "I don't want you to stop."

Noctis' touches and kisses remained almost too gentle until Prompto, emboldened by desire, pushed Noctis back onto the mattress and cast his towel away. Noctis rewarded him with a low groan and a harder, more demanding kiss.

Yes. Yes. This. This was how it was supposed to be, how it should have been.

Prompto was moving too fast, maybe, but he was driven to stop the bleeding, to drown out his voice, to put out the fiery ache building in his chest.

_**….not so innocent now, are you, sweet boy?** _

So close, but so in need of more, more, more, it wasn't quite enough to kill it, not quite enough to stop the bleeding, but it's so good to be in Noctis' arms, to feel skin pressed to skin, their bodies moving together, his soft moans echoes of the squeak of mattress springs beneath them. Noct above him, eyes soft with love, was Prompto's entire universe.

He came hard, his cries swallowed by Noct's passionate kiss and his body enfolded in Noctis' arms. For a moment, there was nothing inside his head but sublime quiet, no voices, no fire, no blood, no violence. It was gone for now. That powerless misery was gone and there was only Noct. He was safe. The worst was over.

They lay face to face, Noct's caresses painfully gentle and Prompto shuddered pleasurably under his touch. This was the opposite of Ardyn's brutality, the opposite of pain. This was beautiful and Noctis was beautiful and everything else, all their responsibilities could go to hell.

Prompto wished he'd had the courage to do this sooner. Maybe, he would have had something good to take with him, something to make the damage less crushing, an antidote to the poison in his blood.

"Where the hell did that come from?" Noctis asked after a while.

Prompto shoved his shoulder playfully and ignored the stitch of pain that lit up in his back.

"You're really going to act like you didn't know?"

Noctis brushed a fingertip over Prompto's bottom lip, a sensation that went straight to Prompto's groin.

"I didn't expect you to pounce on me like that."

"Oh, whatever dude," Prompto said. "I almost died."

Guilty. Noctis looked so guilty.

"I didn't mean that," Prompto said. "I meant the rest."

Noctis was quiet for a minute.

"You've done that before."

I'm okay.

_Everything's fine now._

_**...how delightful** _

"Nah," Prompto said. "I just watch a lot of porn."

Noctis shoved him back, a smirk on his face.

"You're such a liar," he said with a tired laugh. "Do I even want to know?"

No. He did not.

That was a secret Prompto would take to his grave.

* * *

 

At almost 5:30 in the morning, the day's first light should have burned bright on the horizon, but the sky above Lestallum remained dark as pitch. No moon, no stars, the city streets bathed in artificial light.

It didn't matter. Lestallum didn't sleep and the dirty, litter-filled streets were crowded at this hour. It was just past shift change at the power plant and the ladies were either on their way home or headed out for a bite to eat and a drink or two after work. Members of the Kingsglaive patrolled in pairs and refugees sought shelter – a luxury now that the city was the only place besides the Hammerhead with power.

Prompto sat in an alcove just off the market, his headphones in and the music tuned to something loud and rhythmic to drown out the noise in his head. He should have been asleep in his bed at the Levelle, he should have gone back hours ago. Iggy would worry. But he couldn't bring himself to lay down in an empty bed to contemplate what was missing.

If Noctis were still around, maybe sleep wouldn't be such a problem. Maybe he would still have nightmares, but at least there would be something solid to ground him, someone he could reach out to until his terror passed.

Prompto hadn't slept a full night since Noct went into the crystal. If it wasn't the Daemons, it was Ardyn, and he couldn't shake that awful crawling sensation somewhere between subcutaneous tissue and cords of muscle. It was a gross, insistent, gnawing that wouldn't go away.

And the dreams. Gods. If Iggy or Gladio knew just how fucked up he was, Prompto was sure they'd lock him up forever.

All they knew was what they saw on the outside after they rescued him. Broken nose. Body mottled in black and purple and green. Wrists chafed and bloodied.

Ignis probably suspected it was worse than it seemed, too perceptive for his own good, but if he did he never voiced his concerns.

It was far worse than anything Ignis might or might not suspect. Ardyn's violence opened up some deep well of perversity and despair Prompto couldn't shake. Even the memory of his last night with Noctis couldn't damp down that particular fire.

Better they didn't know, and Prompto was not about to volunteer that information.

They treated him like he was going to fall apart and burst into tears at the slightest mention of Gralea or the Keep or Noctis. Like he was some fragile porcelain figurine that might shatter from careless mishandling. As if he hadn't already experienced a lifetime of mishandling and neglect.

Ignis walked on eggshells. Gladio bit back his usual bullying remarks, but was getting frustrated Prompto hadn't snapped back to his usual cheerful self yet. Prompto sensed a dressing down looming in the near future, and he wasn't sure if he could handle it without it driving a deeper wedge between himself and his friends.

His insides were scraped raw and he missed Noctis so bad, it was a physical ache as sharp as a blade. He tried to maintain a cheerful facade, but he couldn't force it. It was all he could do to hold himself together. After all, he hoped being with Noct, even if just that one time, would obliterate Ardyn's touch, but all it did was make him want things too shameful to think about.

It started to rain, a light drizzle at first, then a steady shower and Prompto breathed in petrichor and earth and let it calm him.

He pocketed his phone to shield it from the moisture. If he broke or damaged it, there was no telling when or if he'd get a new one. He needed to get back to the Levelle anyway. Before Ignis started making calls.

He passed through the market, past the entrance to a small pub that remained open and rather busy for the hour. He glanced inside, expecting the usual assortment of ladies still dressed in work clothes, but there were far fewer of them clustered around the bar than there were men.

With only enough cash on him to cover an ale, Prompto wandered inside, lured by thoughts of a cold drink, distractions, and other, baser possibilities. He ordered an ale in a glass and drank half at once, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and let himself be lulled in to a near meditative state by the low hum of voices around him.

It didn't take long to be approached. The man was a little older than himself, unremarkable but not unattractive and he wore his Kingsglaive uniform jacket unbuttoned to reveal the armored vest underneath. That in itself Prompto found attractive. A soldier. A man who knew how to fight.

He finished his ale and the man ordered him another. Prompto drank it down. He wasn't much of a drinker and the alcohol hit him fast. He refused the offer of another. Any more and he would lose any sense of control or agency.

"Wanna get out of here?" Prompto asked.

The man smiled. "Hell yeah."

In a small apartment on the edge of the city, Prompto lost himself in sensation, blocking out all thoughts of either Noctis or Ardyn. Bright morning sunlight should have burned behind the closed blinds as the stranger tugged off Prompto's Crownsguard uniform and pushed him down onto the bed. Birds should have chirped as the man fixed his mouth on Prompto's cock and sucked him into a mindless oblivion.

Darkness prevailed as he heard himself beg for things he could never have imagined himself asking before. Face down on the bed, his wrists pinned somewhere above his head, Prompto moaned into the sheets, whispering pleas for more, more, more but it wasn't quite enough to satisfy the hungry beast inside him.

On his way home later, intoxicated from two post-sex glasses liquor, and wrapped in the heady scent of another man's cologne, Prompto looked up at the sky and cursed the darkness. He cursed the Gods. The Kings of old. Ardyn. Even Noctis. He needed the goddamned sun. He needed Noctis back and Ardyn dead.

He stumbled into the room he shared with Ignis and Gladio at the Lestallum, tripped over something on the floor and took a header into the bathroom door. He landed on the cold tile and pressed his cheek to it, thought of snow, and recoiled. He hated snow. Never wanted to see it again.

"Where the fuck have you been?"

Gladio stood over him, towering and mighty and really, _really_ pissed off.

"I don't need to get your permission to be out, big guy. You're not my mom."

"Are you drunk?"

"What about it?"

Gladio lifted Prompto to his feet. Set him upright. He took Prompto's chin roughly in his hand and peered into his face until Prompto wrenched away from him.

"Why do you smell like budget store cologne?" Gladio asked. "The fuck have you been doing?"

Prompto shoved him away.

"None of your business."

Gladio pushed him back into the wall and pinned him there. He took Prompto's arm and glared at the red marks on his wrist, marks that would be bruises by morning.

"What happened?"

Panic.

"Get your hands off me," he snapped and fought himself free of Gladio's grip. "Don't fucking touch me! Don't touch me!"

Ignis emerged from the darkness of the bedroom and Prompto collided with him, almost knocked him down, muttered an apology, and lurched for his bed.

"The hell is wrong with you?" Gladio asked.

"Gladio, perhaps this conversation is better left for later," Ignis said.

"He stumbles in here drunk and smelling like the gods know what, all banged up -"

"Gladio. Leave him be."

"Guy can't even get laid around here without getting the third degree," Prompto slurred. He sank down into the pillows face first. "Guess you're the only one who can act like a giant man whore without having to answer for it, hunh? Do me a favor and fuck off, will ya?"

Stunned silence. Too tired to care that they cared or that maybe he'd hurt some feelings, Prompto thrashed at the blankets, found the edge of the sheet and covered himself with it. He turned over, away from the empty space, and faced the wall.

"Oh how delightful, to ruin something so beautiful..." Prompto murmured into the pillow. "Well, fuck you, too."

"What was that?" Gladio asked.

"Nothing," Prompto said. "Nothing at all."


	2. Captive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left kudos, comments or subscribed!

_Before..._

* * *

 

On his knees, his hands cuffed behind his back, naked and shivering from cold, Prompto refused to look his captor in the eye. His shoulders ached, his hands and feet had gone numb, and his skin prickled with goosebumps. If he stayed this way much longer, hypothermia would set in.

Worse than the cold was the blob of semen and blood mixed with saliva under his tongue, a vileness he held there and refused to swallow. Even worse than that was the humiliation of what Ardyn had forced him to do.

_**...open wide** _

His nose was probably broken, too, and his jaw ached from both getting walloped in the face with the butt of an MT's rifle twice and from his mouth being forced open for so long. His own fault for fighting back, but Gods, what else was he supposed to do?

Oh, how he fought. Kicked, screamed, clawed, threw punches, spat out every curse he knew, but he was so far outnumbered, he didn't stand a chance. He gave in only when it became clear refusal would earn him a worse punishment.

Prompto wanted to live. So much that he'd rather endure the humiliation of sucking cock in front of a soulless audience than dying for not.

Even if Aranea was wrong and his friends turned him away, Prompto clung to the hope that his life was not meaningless. It had to be worth something. There had to be some reason he was not like the others. Even if Noctis never spoke to him again he had to believe he was no mistake.

Ardyn crouched before him, his cheeks flushed and his eyes soft. He reached out and twined his fingers through Prompto's hair, a gesture that made no sense after such brutality. Prompto shivered and held back a wave of nausea that brought him close to vomiting.

"Now, now, don't be ashamed," Ardyn cooed.

Prompto's teeth knocked together, the sound like rattling bones and too loud, so loud, Ardyn could hear it. His limbs shook as the cold seeped into every part of his body, skin, guts, skeleton. It was cold on the glacier, but he was a fool to think it was the coldest place he'd ever know.

"I'm sure you're used to pleasuring your dear Noct with that big mouth of yours."

**_...let me in_ **

Intentional or not, it was a kick in the gut. He'd never done more than flirt. Noct mistook it for friendly banter, or pretended he didn't notice.

"Oh," Ardyn said. His hand slid down to cup Prompto's cheek. A thumb brushed over his chapped, sore lips, and Prompto saw his cruel smile from the corner of his eye. "Was that your first time?"

As if he didn't already know. Ardyn probably even knew Prompto's experience with sex was limited to masturbation and the occasional heavy petting session at parties.

Ardyn's laugh mocked him and a wave of revulsion raced through Prompto's entire body. He was glad the shivers from the chill hid it, but his teeth clicked louder and his face burned hot.

_Why is he doing this to me?_

"Oh, how delightful," Ardyn said. Fingers trailed along Prompto's sore jaw. "To ruin something so beautiful."

Ruined. That sounded right. Prompto couldn't imagine being the same after this. He couldn't imagine looking the others in the eye, smiling, laughing, making jokes. He was ruined.

"I'm really going to enjoy this."

Prompto pulled away, sickened by thoughts of what else Ardyn might have in mind.

A vice-like hand clamped around the back of his neck, cold metal fingers dug into already tender flesh, and Prompto suppressed a yelp. He almost gagged on the unswallowed come again as he imagined all the things Ardyn could do, and what he probably would do, before this was over.

"Not so innocent now, are you?"

Ardyn's hands swept over his cheeks, over his shoulders, his chest, and down to his thighs. They slid upward toward his hips and Prompto's mind and body separated into two distinct parts as Ardyn's touch grew bolder and more affectionate.

His mind recoiled, and bile rose in the back of his throat. He nearly vomited, for real this time, from both the vile combination under his tongue and from the growing dread that the worst was yet to come.

Yet his body reacted favorably to Ardyn's gentle touches. In his short twenty years, physical affection was hard to come by. He was starved for it, he needed it, craved it the way an alcoholic craved his next drink. Sometimes, he ached for it so badly, he'd fantasize about snuggling into Noctis in the darkness of the tent while the others slept. He'd imagine how good it would feel to just lay there against the warmth of Noct's chest, an arm draped around his waist, and Noct's soft breath against his forehead. It wasn't just some lovestruck daydream, but an actual physical need that grew more and more demanding the older he got.

Prompto's parents sure as hell never touched him if they didn't have to. Not even when he was little.

His legs were numb now, from sitting on them so long, from bare skin pressed to the freezing concrete floor. In vain, he tried to stop shivering, but it only made him shiver harder.

"Look at me," Ardyn said.

Prompto ignored him and stared at a point on the wall across the room. Ardyn would have to make him. He wasn't an MT. He didn't take orders from anyone.

"Defiance will cost you."

The MT squeezed the back of his neck harder, clamped its other hand around Prompto's forehead and forced his face toward Ardyn's. He had no choice but to look.

That triumphant smile sickened him. He hoped some day he'd get a chance to wipe that smug look of his face.

"Now, are you willing to behave and do as I say?" Ardyn asked. "Or will you force me to be more... creative?"

Prompto mustered what courage he had left and spat the come back into Ardyn's face. It hit Ardyn right between the eyes, a pinkish-white blob that spilled down the side of his nose and toward his mouth.

_Suck on that, you sick fuck._

Prompto had about three seconds to enjoy his own small victory, then Ardyn's shocked disgust turned to pure rage. The back of his knuckles smashed across Prompto's face and he saw stars as blinding pain flared through his already broken nose. He cried out and slumped to the side, carried by the momentum of Ardyn's blow. His head hit concrete with a snare-drum thud and the vomit he'd been holding back finally came up.

He lay there on the frigid concrete, his body twisted awkwardly, in a puddle of his own barf. His head pounded, and his entire face was on fire.

"If you're gonna kill me, just get it over with," he said thickly.

Ardyn crouched down and threaded fingers through his hair again.

"Kill you? I'm just getting started," Ardyn said. "Now. Let's get you cleaned up."

* * *

It was early afternoon when Prompto woke, gasping and covered in sweat, still fully dressed and his muscles stiff. His cheeks were wet, his head ached, and his mouth tasted like ass.

The bed dipped and Prompto rolled over, on alert for any threat, and clutched the pillow tighter in his arms, as if it would ward off the boogieman. There was no boogieman, just Ignis, at the edge of the bed with that look on his face that Prompto had come to hate over the last few weeks.

"I'm okay, Iggy," Prompto said, his voice full of splinters. "Just a bad dream."

"When was the last time you got a full night's rest?"

Not since before Noct pushed him off the train. Maybe even before that. Altissia. Cape Caem. Maybe then. Prompto couldn't remember anymore.

"I had nightmares before," Prompto said. "Plenty of times."

"Not this intensely."

"Yeah, well..." Prompto muttered. He didn't want to talk about it. "I'm gonna take a shower."

"Of course."

Prompto could still smell the stranger's cologne when he stripped off his uniform in the bathroom. He didn't even get the guy's name. As if that mattered.

He stood under scalding hot water and shivered at the thought of how good it felt to be touched, to be in control of what was happening to him, to have a choice. It didn't matter that it was a stranger. It didn't matter that it was reckless and stupid. For a while, it killed the hurt and fear and satisfied base needs and filled the void in his chest with something that felt _good_. For a while, it gave him the peace he couldn't find otherwise.

But what would Noctis think of him fucking some random dude? Would he understand it wasn't personal? That it was purely physical?

Would he be pissed?

Hurt?

Jealous?

Prompto didn't know because Noct wasn't here.

If he was, there would be no drunken hook-ups with strangers. There would only be Noct. That would be enough.

Thinking of Noctis brought on a throb of shame and guilt so deep, Prompto sank to his knees, unable to breathe. As good as it felt to not have to think or hurt, and as bad as Prompto craved more, it wasn't like him to throw away his morals or anxieties or be so self-serving. It wasn't like him to make his needs known, not to anyone, let alone a stranger in a bar.

Hell, he couldn't even ask for a hug when he really needed one.

"What are you doing?" he asked himself.

Whatever it was, he couldn't do it again.

But Gods, it was so easy. He didn't even have to work for it.

Clean and smelling of his own cologne, Prompto emerged from the bath and sat at the end of the bed to towel dry his hair. In the corner, Ignis fiddled with the hot plate without comment. Whatever he was making smelled delicious and full of calories, like warm butter and fresh bread and fried ham, and it sizzled and popped in the pan.

Prompto thought of home, or his imagined, idealized childhood home, not the one he grew up in. The home where his mother greeted him with a smile, a hug, and a kiss after school. The one where his father wasn't cold and distant and unkind but warm and full of good humor and smart advice. This was what that home smelled like, and Ignis was a far better parent to him than either of the people that raised him.

He had no right to resent Ignis' concern. Not so long ago, he would have sold his soul for just one parent who cared enough to look at him like that.

"You don't have to cook for me, Iggy," Prompto said. He pulled on a pair of jeans and buttoned them. "I'll grab something while I'm out."

"It's no trouble."

No trouble. A flat-out lie. Nothing was easy for Ignis anymore. Not fighting, not navigating his way around new places, not cooking. He insisted on doing it anyway, and Prompto usually let him, not only for the sake of Ignis' pride, but also because Ignis was determined and capable and didn't deserve to be treated like an invalid.

Today, though it felt like pity. Prompto didn't want his pity.

Ignis didn't want Prompto's pity either, but Prompto pitied him anyway. He, like Prompto, struggled to keep his head above water. They both kept going because it was the only thing they knew how to do. There was no other choice but to fight through it.

Prompto got up and joined Ignis at the small table. The fare was simple, just a pair of grilled sandwiches, but Prompto appreciated the effort.

"Need some help?" Prompto asked.

"I'll never learn to do it on my own if the two of you keep babying me," Ignis said. "Please. It's as much for your benefit as mine."

"Okay," Prompto said and fished through the box of dishes and utensils. "I'll set the table."

"Paper plates should suffice," Ignis said.

It took longer than usual for Ignis to assemble bread and butter and cheese and meat in the proper configuration, but he did it without Prompto's help, and when he placed the steaming hot sandwich in front of Prompto, Prompto ate every bite, and then a second one when Ignis insisted.

Once their meal was finished, Ignis poured something from the kettle into two mugs and pushed one toward Prompto. Prompto took it, expecting coffee.

Not coffee. Hot chocolate. Prompto's favorite hot drink and one he rarely allowed himself to have due to the high sugar and calorie content.

Overwhelmed by gratitude, Prompto teared up. He wrapped both hands around the mug and bowed his head, ashamed of himself for acting like an ass.

"Thanks, Iggy. You're the best."

"You're welcome," Ignis said. "I thought perhaps since Gladio isn't here, we could talk."

Prompto's throat tightened and his heart started to pound. How could he say any of it out loud? How could he tell Ignis the details of what Ardyn did to him? He couldn't. They couldn't know how far down Ardyn had taken him, or how many layers of his soul and psyche he'd ripped away. They couldn't know. They'd never look at him the same again.

"I'm okay," Prompto said.

 _I'm okay. Everything's fine now_.

"Really. I am."

"Forgive me for being concerned," Ignis said, "but you haven't been yourself and you're not sleeping."

"Yeah, I know," Prompto said. "It's getting better, though."

"From where I stand, it doesn't seem that way."

Ignis laid his hand on top of Prompto's, and Prompto recoiled internally. His hand jerked under Ignis' but he didn't pull back. The less he showed it, the less likely Ignis was to put the pieces together.

"I'm okay, Iggy," Prompto said again, but enough hoarseness crept into his voice to betray him. "I'll be okay. I just need... time, I guess."

"It might help if you talked about it."

"I..." Prompto began, but his throat locked up.

"Ease my mind," Ignis said. "I've been imagining the worst things..."

_It was so much worse than you can ever imagine, Iggy._

For more than a minute, Prompto struggled not to cry, to find his voice, and to think of a way to get Ignis off his back without sounding like a dick. Gladio, he could mouth off to all day long and not feel sorry for it, but Ignis was different. For as salty as he could be, for as dry as his puns and insults, Ignis was too caring a man to sucker punch with words.

"It's not... what he did," Prompto said after a long silence. "Not totally, anyway."

"I understand."

How could he? He didn't know.

"Do you?" Prompto asked. "I mean, you guys have been training since you were kids. I barely know how to defend myself."

Prompto took a deep breath and wished he was able to say more. He wished he could tell Ignis the truth, all of it. It would feel good to get it out, so that maybe they'd understand exactly what kind of savage Ardyn was, but they'd also know exactly what kind of fucked-up Prompto turned out to be.

"I never want to feel that powerless again," Prompto said. "Not ever."

Ignis squeezed Prompto's fingers to reassure him, but it only pushed the knife in Prompto's gut deeper.

"From what I hear, you gave it your best effort," Ignis said. "And blew up a couple Magitek labs in the process. Not exactly powerless, are you?"

Prompto had almost forgotten about that. It seemed so long ago. Months. Years. Decades.

In reality, it had only been a few weeks. There were still bruises on his ribs. Faded, but still there.

"Hey, Bust-A-Base, right?" Prompto said. "They all but invited me in. Gave me the codes and everything."

Ignis favored him with a small smile, but was clearly not fooled by Prompto's attempt to deflect.

"So they did," he said. "But, it's what happened after that which concerns me."

Prompto tugged his hand away and let it rest in his lap. He stared into his mug of hot chocolate and breathed in the scent, thought of his younger, fatter self, and pushed the mug away.

"I don't want to pressure you," Ignis said. "But... I don't want you to think we're not here for you, either. And I don't want you to think that we only tolerated you because of Noctis."

He'd been asking himself that very question for a while. Whether or not they enjoyed his company or if they put up with him for Noct's sake. It was nice to hear it was the former and not the latter, but it didn't give him the courage to speak up.

"I appreciate it but I don't want to talk about it, I just want to move on, dude," he said. "I'm alive and that's good enough, right?"

He swallowed around the lump in his throat and allowed a single tear to escape. He wiped it away, sipped the hot chocolate he could barely stomach to buy a minute to compose himself. He didn't want Ignis to hear it in his voice. He didn't want Ignis to know he almost gave up, more than once. He didn't want Ignis to know how he laid in the snow, unable to go on, too cold and too hurt to move, or how he wished for the end to come quick. And that was before Ardyn got a hold of him.

"Alright," Ignis said. "But if you change your mind I'm happy to listen."

"You'll be the first person I talk to, okay?"

"That's good enough for me."

Ignis cleared his throat and shifted in his chair to assume a more authoritative position.

_Here it comes._

"On a different note, I hope you were smart and used protection last night," Ignis said. "I don't want to lecture you about prophylactics."

"I did," Prompto muttered, glad Ignis couldn't see his blush. "I'm not stupid."

"Good," Ignis said. He patted Prompto's hand. "Is there anything else I need to be concerned about?"

"I've got it handled, Iggy. Promise."

Gods, what a lie. Nothing was handled. He was barely hanging on.

_I wish I could tell you the truth._

Prompto doubted Ignis would understand everything, without judging him for his choices. He judged himself, hated himself for giving in, for wanting to feel something besides pain.

"Is there anything I can do in the meantime?"

Prompto almost said no, but there was something Ignis could help with.

"Can you get Gladio off my back?" Prompto asked. "I don't need him pushing me right now. I mean, I know that's what he does and he means well, but I just need him to back off until my head's on straight again."

"I'll do my best," Ignis said. "He's as worried as I am, you know."

Prompto wished they would stop worrying. Worry wouldn't quiet the ache or purge the toxins from his blood. It wouldn't fix him.

Nothing could.

* * *

A few days later, Cor called a meeting. They gathered in the conference room of the Levelle to discuss a game plan going forward. Ignis and Iris spent most of the day in the hotel's kitchen preparing snacks and Prompto pitched in to set up chairs and tables, while Gladio searched out leaders of the various smaller groups of people.

More people showed up than Prompto expected. Among all the familiar faces were plenty of new ones, and he got nervous as the crowd grew in size from the ten or so he anticipated to nearly thirty.

He took a seat and looked around and wondered what he was doing here. He was not a leader, nor nobility, not the son of some important guy with political clout. He didn't own and run an essential business. He was just a guy who lucked into a friendship with a handful of important people.

Cindy slid into the empty chair next to him, and Prompto sat up, ramrod straight, offered a weak smile and held his breath. He hadn't thought about her since he heard Noct totaled the Regalia, but that didn't make her any less a Goddess in his eyes.

"Hey there, darlin'," she drawled and passed him a bottle of ale. "What'd I miss?"

"They haven't started yet," he said. "But you better get snacks while you can. Iggy made them and they're going fast."

"Wasn't none left," she said. "Guess they must've been real good though."

Prompto twisted the top off his ale and took a swallow. At the front of the room Cor, Gladio and a guy from the Kingsglaive spoke among themselves while the rest of the room settled in.

"You doin' alright?" she asked. "You look awful worn out."

"I'm good," he lied. "Just been a long day."

"What happened to your nose?"

_**…open wide** _

"Broke it," he said. "Fighting the bad guys."

Lies. So many lies. He lied all the time now. He'd lied his whole life. Just once, he'd like to tell the whole truth, about himself, where he came from, what that goddamned codeprint really meant, what Ardyn did to him, and why he did it. He was sick of the half-truths and outright fabrications, just so he could make it through the day.

Cindy poked the crooked spot on his nose gently. The corners of her mouth turned downward in a pout too cute for words, and she cocked her head to the side.

"Shoulda had someone set that before it healed all wrong," she said.

"Eh, adds character," he said.

Cor called the meeting to order, flanked on one side by Monica, Dave, a guy from the Kingsglaive, and Ignis, Gladio and Aranea on the other.

"First and foremost, I want to thank you all for joining us," Cor said. "There's a lot to discuss, and I'd like everyone to hold their comments or suggestions until you're prompted, otherwise it's going to be a long night."

Day, night, didn't matter. Time ceased to have meaning without the sun to mark the passage of one day into the next. Prompto stopped checking his watch days ago. His sleep schedule, when he did sleep, was a mess. Two in the afternoon, four in the morning, noon. The dreams woke him before he was fully rested anyway, whatever the hour, it was arbitrary.

"There's much to do and I'm sure all of you have responsibilities of your own to tend to, so I'll be as brief as possible," Cor said. "First and foremost is the safety of the people in Lestallum. I'm aware there have been some clashes over territory and native status around the city already, and I urge you to put aside your differences and work together. We're all in this, so let's make a point to welcome newcomers, no matter where they're from."

"I ain't welcomin' no Nifs!" someone shouted.

"They're no longer Nifs," Cor said. "They're survivors, just like you."

Prompto relaxed and let out a breath, unconsciously rubbed his wrist, and shot a glance at Aranea. She appeared bored, but her posture was tense. She said nothing, but Prompto noted Ignis' reassuring touch on the arm and the soft smile she gave when he whispered something in her ear.

"Practicing your vows?" he murmured and took a swallow of ale.

He tuned most of what Cor said out when he noticed the man from the bar on the far side of the room.

_Hurt me._

Skin clammy, palms sweaty, Prompto bolted up from his chair and fled. He didn't stop until he reached the fountain in the square and paced with his face in his hands and torn between suggesting a repeat performance and complete disgust with himself for wanting it.

_Hurt me._

"The fuck did you do to me?" he murmured into his hands.

He sat on the edge of the fountain and dropped his head between his knees, on the verge of a panic attack or a psychological implosion. The dichotomy of wanting someone to hold him down and fuck him, and being absolutely repulsed by the idea was hard to reconcile or make sense of.

He hated everything Ardyn did to him. He wanted to vomit every time he thought about it.

But the only difference between Ardyn and the stranger was a matter of consent.

Confused and sickened, Prompto brought his legs up toward his chest and laid his arms over his knees. Maybe he should just go back up to the room and jerk off and get it out of his system. Maybe a cold shower would do the trick.

He was about to head upstairs when a familiar child's voice called out and Prompto smiled for real for the first time in weeks. He turned around and grinned at the boy running toward him at a dead sprint and held out his arms to receive him.

"My buddy Talcott," he said as Talcott crashed into him and threw his arms around Prompto's neck. "How ya doin'?"

Talcott's hug was more welcome than the boy would ever know. It came at just the right time and it was enough of a distraction to make him forget the sickness in his blood.

"Dustin says I can watch the meeting if I'm really quiet," Talcott said.

"Dude, it's so boring," Prompto said and rolled his eyes. "You sure you wanna go in there? They already ate all the good snacks."

"They did?" Talcott worried. He let go of Prompto's neck and slid back down to the ground. "Now what am I gonna eat?"

"Iggy saved you some cake and some of those fancy sandwich thingies."

"Oh, whew! I thought I was gonna have to have Dustin's cooking."

Prompto looked up at Dustin's frown.

"Yikes. That was rude, buddy."

"Sorry, Dustin," Talcott said. "Your cooking's okay."

"Between Ignis and Iris, he's gotten a little spoiled," Dustin said.

"That makes two of us," Prompto said. He held out his hand. "You really want to go inside?"

Talcott nodded and Prompto returned to the conference room where Dave spoke about the need for experienced hunters to join the fight against the daemons. Prompto reclaimed his seat and allowed Talcott to sit on his knees.

"You alright?" Cindy whispered in his ear. "You bolted outta here like you got swarmed by a bunch of soldier wasps."

"Just needed some air."

Another lie. One among many he would tell to keep his secrets safe.

Prompto's legs went numb from supporting Talcott's weight and and he would have bruises on his thighs from the boy's bony backside, but he didn't mind. Talcott kept him from thinking about the things he was better off leaving alone to begin with. Between Talcott's questions and his endless shifting, there was no chance of slipping back into despair.

Talcott eventually grew bored of the adults talking, settled himself into Prompto's chest and laid his head against Prompto's shoulder. As Prompto slipped his arms around the boy, he said a silent prayer for him. He'd already lost too much. He'd already had his heart broken and he was only eight. There might be worse things for him in the future, bigger hurts, deeper wounds, but Prompto prayed Talcott would get luckier than he did.

He left a sleeping Talcott with Dustin when the meeting broke for a fifteen, and went to the restroom. Inside, he took a piss, washed his hands and threw some water on his face to bring some color to his pale, sickly cheeks. As he dried off, in walked the stranger from the bar. The man smiled at him in the mirror and Prompto froze.

"Fancy meeting you here," the man said.

"Yeah," Prompto said distantly. "Fancy that."

 _Fuck_.

"You wanna...?" the man asked and tipped his head toward the stall.

_Hurt me._

It was a harder choice than it should have been. It should have been easy to say no, to walk away, to go back to his friends and take whatever comfort they had to offer besides this. That was where he belonged. That was the smart choice.

But that vile, awful craving burned through him, as shameful as it was tempting.

"Yeah... I wanna," Prompto said. "But not here."


	3. Drowning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a playlist for this. Is anyone interested in knowing what I listened to while writing it? If so, check out "So Far From Your Weapon" by the Dead Weather and "I Feel Like I'm Drowning," by Two Feet.
> 
> Tags have been updated. If there's anything I missed please don't be afraid to tell me. If it's not there and it needs to be, I'll be happy to add it.
> 
> Anyway, (un) happy reading! And thanks so much, guys!

 

_Before..._

Steam rose from a huge metal tub, the twisting vapors mesmerizing for their promise of warmth and comfort. Prompto could almost smell the heat from where he stood. It was all he could do not to throw himself into the water, Ardyn be damned.

It would feel so good after days of exposure to the cold, after injuries too numerous to count. He imagined the warmth bleeding back into his fingers and toes, the heat loosening the tension in his muscles, the ache in his tired bones.

He thought he would do almost anything for just ten minutes alone to soak away his troubles.

Almost.

"Inviting, isn't it," Ardyn said.

He placed toiletries on a small table beside the tub. Prompto watched, cataloging the items as Ardyn laid them out one by one with a showy flourish.

Shampoo. Soap. A washcloth. A razor and a can of foam.

Like a promise.

But of what?

Ardyn smiled cordially and offered Prompto his hand, as if Prompto could take it. He kept his eyes fixed on the table and the items gathered there.

"Come."

Prompto finally tore his eyes from the display and looked at his captor.

"What do I have to do for it?"

"Do you not trust me?"

"That's a joke, right?"

Ardyn just smiled, sat on the edge of the tub, and dragged a hand through the water. Steam coiled around his arm and he beckoned to Prompto again.

He longed for the warmth of the bath, but he fully expected to pay for it. Somehow. Some way. It would cost him. Ardyn did nothing out of kindness.

"It's not acid," Ardyn said. "I don't intend to boil you alive."

_Don't do it, stupid. Stay where you are._

Prompto's feet moved on their own. He took one step forward, against his better judgment, and in spite of every alarm bell clanging inside his skull. And another step, unable to take the offered hand and hating himself for choosing compliance and comfort over the rational option. He didn't want to be hurt anymore, but he would die of hypothermia if he didn't get warm soon.

"You gonna unlock me?" Prompto asked.

"I can't risk having you try to claw my eyes out again, now can I?"

_I'd do more than that if I got the chance, you son of a bitch._

Which was precisely why Ardyn wouldn't unlock the cuffs around his wrists. Prompto didn't make his capture easy. He went down, but not without putting up one hell of a fight. If maybe he got in a few digs himself and wounded Ardyn in the process, Prompto wasn't going to lose sleep over it.

He shuffled toward Ardyn, his knees knocking together and his teeth chattering. He looked not at Ardyn but at the steam, the promise of relief the bath offered. It looked so comforting, he could have cried.

Ardyn held his upper arms as Prompto slipped one foot beneath the surface. It was hot, painfully hot against his frozen skin, but his foot found the bottom and he kept going. Ardyn supported most of his weight as he stepped the other foot inside, and sank down, all the way to his chin.

His moan of relief earned him laughter, but Prompto didn't give a damn. It felt like the hot water was searing his skin off and he didn't care. His teeth knocked together violently and his breath came in short, relieved pants, but the heat the heat seeped into his refrigerated bones and thawed his frozen skin.

"Aren't we dramatic," Ardyn said.

As if Ardyn himself wasn't the most dramatic, theatrical creature that walked the face of the world. As if everything he said and did wasn't completely for show.

"And you're not? That's like a coward calling a chocobo yellow," Prompto said.

Ardyn's temper flared and Prompto closed his eyes, prepared to be hit for his smart mouth, but the blow never came. He opened his eyes, then averted them.

Ardyn removed his coat and tossed it aside, unbuttoned his shirt with slow, deliberate ease, undressed completely, and that ugly knot in Prompto's stomach reformed and doubled in size.

Of course a bath wouldn't just be a bath. It couldn't just be a simple courtesy or anything.

Prompto didn't want to look at Ardyn under the best of circumstances, which to be frank, no circumstances involving Ardyn were ideal, but his aversion now was tenfold. He closed his eyes again and turned his face away from the scars layered across Ardyn's muscular chest and the cock dangling at half mast between his legs. He didn't want to look.

The water level rose as Ardyn eased himself into the tub with a contented sigh. Prompto drew his knees closer to his chest and pressed his bound arms and back against the side. He could feel his toes again, but what price was he about to pay for it?

For a few minutes, nothing happened. Ardyn sat with his arms draped around the edges of the tub, across from him, a picture of relaxation and calm. He stretched his legs out, one foot on each side of Prompto's hips, tipped his head back and groaned with pleasure.

"Nothing like a good soak after a long, hard battle, is there?" Ardyn said conversationally.

Prompto wasn't about to have a friendly chat. There was nothing Ardyn could say or do to change Prompto's opinion of him.

Water sloshed against the sides of the tub and Prompto squeezed his eyes closed, prepared to be hit or touched or whatever awful thing Ardyn had in mind. Hands gripped his upper arms and Prompto curled himself into the closest approximation of a ball as he could with his wrists still bound behind him.

Ardyn dragged him forward and turned him so that he faced the opposite direction. As if being naked, handcuffed, and without a weapon wasn't bad enough. Now he couldn't see the enemy.

Warm water cascaded down over Prompto's head and he gasped in surprise.

"Relax," Ardyn said. "I only mean to wash you."

Prompto swallowed around the lump of fear in his throat.

"That's all?"

"For now," Ardyn said.

Prompto didn't dare relax. He didn't dare believe bathing was Ardyn's only aim.

There was a soft plastic snap, a liquid sucking noise, and then Ardyn drew him closer. Hands brushed over Prompto's hair and fingertips began to massage his scalp gently. Floral, yet generic, the smell of the shampoo was almost intoxicating.

Clean. It smelled like clean. Like hotel showers and home.

How many days since Prompto was able to take more than a whore bath? He couldn't remember. His last real shower was aboard the train, but he couldn't remember anymore how long ago that was. Days? A week?

Slowly, slowly, Prompto relaxed into it but still alert to any danger. Nails gently scratched his scalp, the shampoo worked into a fragrant lather.

Nice. So nice. He almost forgot who was touching him.

"Now to rinse..."

Then, hands on his shoulders, fingernails digging in, pushing him down beneath the water. Prompto was caught off guard as his body was submerged. He'd only drawn half a breath before he went under. Half a breath that ran out fast.

Prompto's lungs began to scream. Bubbles escaped his lips. Ardyn was going to drown him.

He thrashed beneath the water, desperate for air and salvation. With his feet braced against the sides and his palms pressed flat against the bottom of the tub, Prompto ignored the screaming pain in his shoulders and pushed up, doing his best to fight his way back to the surface.

It did him no good. Ardyn's hands held him too far submerged, and he succeeded only in using up the last of his air.

Ardyn's face above was a watercolor blur of red and cream, the light a shimmery gold.

Prompto couldn't hold on to his meager oxygen supply. Instinct forced the rest out and instinct drew a lungful of water in. He choked on it, his body rejecting it, his throat locking up. Everything was going red now, the water around him the color of blood, everything but Ardyn's black streaked face and burning eyes.

And then, calm. Euphoria. He was floating. The best things in his world around him.

A smiling Noctis. Ignis, presenting him with a plate of that spicy-longbone thing he liked so much, extra spicy for good measure. Gladio's grin of approval. Piles of photographs. Sunrises. Beautiful scenery. A crystal, so deep blue it was almost black. The flash of 13 armigers in pitch darkness and Noct's face, older, scruffier, bathed in pure, unfiltered moonlight, his hand shaking on the hilt of his engine blade. Dust motes. Silence.

If this was death, it wasn't so bad. He wasn't afraid anymore. There was no pain or fear, only warmth and the bliss of good memories and friends.

A coldness filled him, snow, ice, a frost edged draft and he opened his eyes as warm water spewed from his mouth and nose. He sucked in a ragged breath, fell into a fit of coughing that hurt all the way to the base of his spine. Bare feet and wet, dull gray concrete were all he could see through the involuntary tears in his eyes.

His head was full of sizzling static and phantom voices and shrieks and pops, like a radio station with a bad signal. Nothing coherent came through. Only white noise.

Fingertips glided down his spine, then back up, and traced small, gentle circles against his shoulder blades. Prompto shuddered, coughed again, thought about fighting, but what was the use?

"Ready to die, Prompto?"

Ardyn gripped his upper arm and Prompto instinctively pulled back, his eyes gone wide and his body tense. His his hip bone ground into the concrete, his skin scraped raw, but he had to get away. Even if he had to roll out of here or crawl out on his belly. Even if he stood no chance of getting free, he had to _try_.

It was a futile effort. Ardyn pinned him down swiftly, with an ease that was almost embarrassing. Prompto continued to struggle, ran out of steam, and stilled beneath his weight.

"Ah, so you do want to live after all," Ardyn said. Fingers combed through Prompto's wet hair. "I admire that."

"Lucky me," Prompto rasped.

Ardyn popped him across the mouth, hard enough to sting. Point taken.

"Did you see?" Ardyn asked. "Did the angels welcome you? Did the lights of the afterlife call you home?"

Prompto didn't know what he was asking. He saw only the people who mattered. People who might turn him away if he lived through this, but they would always matter for being his first and best friends.

"Perhaps heaven doesn't welcome soulless experiments," Ardyn said. A fingertip brushed over Prompto's trembling lips. "Let's try this again, shall we?"

Ardyn lifted him from the floor and carried him back to the tub, like a sacrificial lamb for slaughter.

* * *

The alleyway was empty, unless Prompto counted the rats rooting through the heaps of garbage piled next to the overflowing dumpster. He couldn't see them, but he could hear them tearing through plastic and refuse, their squeaks sometimes sounds of communication and other times hostile shrieks as they fought over some choice scrap.

He feared rats only marginally less than bugs, but he found himself in like company among them. Better rats than people. People asked questions and commented on things that weren't their business. Things like fresh bruises and unfamiliar perfumes and wild, unhinged eyes.

Iris once told him the women did all the work in Lestallum. He assumed that meant the men were responsible for the housekeeping but he surveyed the filth around him and wondered if that wasn't true.

Whatever the case, the trash problem only worsened once refugees started flowing into the city. No one was doing anything about it. It just piled up while the ladies worked twelve hour shifts at the power plant to keep the lights on.

He wondered what that said about the men in this town. The women, too, and everyone in between.

The time on his phone read 3:57am, not that it mattered at all, but it was either too late or too early to go back to the room.  He was still fairly drunk and too tired to face Gladio and his questions or Ignis' quiet concern.

He couldn't just sit there among the trash bags for the next four hours, but he didn't have the energy to get up and walk around, either. If he ran into someone he knew, they'd report back they'd seen him looking like he got mugged and spent the night nursing a bottle of gin, holed up in a dumpster.

It wasn't like he could hide it once he went back. Sticking around here was just delaying the inevitable. Gladio would yell at him, Ignis would fret. This time, they might actually sit him down and try to force the truth out.

There wasn't much he could imagine that would be worse than that. It was one thing for them to know his origins. Another thing entirely for them to know what Ardyn did, and the deviant he'd turned into as a result, or how he craved pleasure and pain in equal measures. They already saw him as weak.  They didn't need to see his shame, too.

He hated it. It was like Ardyn had opened up his skin and put a daemon inside and it had run rampant and had torn holes in vital organs and nightly danced a jig in what was left if his dignity.

For a while, he watched moths fling themselves against the flickering security light across from him, mindless in their quest to get closer to its harsh glow. The shadows undulated from rust to sickly neon orange and back, the shape of massive wings upon the walls. Beautiful and ugly. Sinister. Hopeful.

Unlike the rats, moths were stupid creatures that didn't know they were killing themselves just to touch their false heaven.

Prompto laughed softly, bitterly at that irony. He didn't have any right to judge them. He was no better.

The only difference between them was that Prompto was intelligent enough to know there was no solace or salvation to be found in things that would ultimately burn him alive. Intelligent or not, he knew he'd fucked up and was still stupid enough to do it again. Just like those stupid moths, bashing themselves to death against the glass on the off chance they'd get to touch the light.

Ignis and Gladio were gone when Prompto finally returned to the room. He said his thanks to whichever God was responsible for small favors and stripped off his clothes in the hall. How he could still be drunk hours after the fact, he didn't know, but he moved with the uncoordinated grace of a career alcoholic three-quarters of the way to unconsciousness.

In the bathroom, he filled the tub with warm water and glanced at himself in the mirror.

Big mistake. He looked worse than he felt. And that was saying something.

Spooked by his own haunted eyes, he turned away and dug through his bag for an elixir. That would take care of the more obvious signs of violence. Too bad it couldn't fix the rest.

He slipped into scalding hot water and leaned back until all but his head was submerged. With a washcloth and a bar of soap, he scrubbed his skin once, then twice, just to be sure he'd gotten every last trace of stranger off him. He wet his hair and lathered it with hotel shampoo but became sickened by the too-familiar odor.

_**...inviting, isn't it?** _

Driven to rid himself of that, too, Prompto slipped under the water and scrubbed the suds from his hair. He came up, took a breath and dunked himself again.

This time, he didn't come up for air right away. He lay on the bottom of the tub, holding the breath in his lungs, eyes open to the rippling reflection of the water's surface. Like sunlight on a pond.

His lungs started to burn, but still he held on, counting backwards from 100 until a terrifying and familiar face blocked out the light. A hand reached in and forced him down to the bottom. He flailed, grasped the edge of the tub as a second hand gripped his shoulder. Bubbles burst from his mouth and he tasted alkaline soap residue in the water.

Those hands dragged him out and onto the cold bathroom floor, the tile sub-zero against his scalded skin. He screamed and slapped at his oppressor, unseeing and unthinking until Gladio dragged him into a sitting position and pinned his shoulders to the wall.

"The hell do you think you're doing?" Gladio demanded.

_**...did the angels welcome you?** _

It wasn't often that Gladio looked afraid, but he did now, and that didn't make sense. There was no reason in the world for Gladio to fear him.

Gladio released his shoulders and took Prompto's face in his palms, his eyes searching like he might find the map of the holy grail written in Prompto's freckles.

"Please tell me that wasn't what I think it was."

"Just taking a bath, big guy," Prompto said flatly.

"Like hell you were."

**_...heaven doesn't welcome soulless experiments_ **

Gladio's voice trembled on the last two words. It was then that Prompto realized Gladio was not afraid of him, he was afraid _for_ him.

_Fuck you and your pity._

"I wasn't trying to drown myself," Prompto said. He sat forward and did his best to cover nakedness. Ridiculous to be shy now, with his dignity in tatters. "It was just a bath."

Gladio sat back on his heels and stared at Prompto with undue interest.

"You're scaring the shit out of Iggy, you know," Gladio said.

_What about you, big guy?  Do you even give a shit?_

"I don't care who you talk to, but you need to talk to somebody," Gladio said. "Because this? Whatever you think you're doing, it ain't good."

Prompto got to his feet and reached for a towel. He wrapped it around his waist and turned his back on Gladio.

"I'm dealing with it."

"No, you're not," Gladio said. He sighed. "Listen, let's get some breakfast and talk. Please."

Weariness stole over Prompto and all he wanted to do was sleep.

"You wouldn't understand."

"Try me."

Prompto took out his toothbrush and squeezed toothpaste onto it. Gladio's hand dropped to Prompto's shoulder and he jumped, slid away, and pressed his back to the wall. A cornered rabbit couldn't have been more pathetic.

"Goddamn," Gladio said. "What the hell did he do to you?"

"I don't. Want. To _talk_. About it."

"Prompto-"

"You've always been the biggest guy in the room," Prompto said. "No one could ever hurt you like that, so how the fuck could you possibly understand what any of it was like?"

His rage was misplaced, but that didn't stop it from coming out.  He was dimly aware he was trying to provoke Gladio to anger, but that felt better than pity. 

 _Hit me.  I dare you._  

"You think no one's ever gotten the jump on me?" Gladio asked. "You'd be dead wrong about that."

"I got more than just the shit kicked out of me, Gladio."

"Yeah? Well, so did I," Gladio said. Prompto saw a flicker of something in Gladio's face he could relate to, something haunted, but only for a second, then the worry returned. "Come on. I'm begging you here. _Talk to me_."

"What good will it do? It's done. It happened. I'm dealing with it."

"If this is what it's doing to you, you're not dealing."

"What are you gonna do, make me?" Prompto fired back. "Force it out of me like he did?"

Gladio's face crumpled, like he was about to cry. The only time Prompto had ever seen the man show this kind of sadness was over Iggy's unconscious body in Altissia. Gladio squeezed his eyes shut and fat tears rolled down his cheeks, leaving Prompto too stunned to be angry.

If he questioned whether or not Gladio cared before, he had his answer now.

"I don't know how to help you."

Prompto slipped back to the floor, toothbrush still in hand and dropped his head to his knees.

So tired. Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually. Drained to the point of exhaustion.

Gladio crouched down, wiped at his eyes with the heels of his palms, and took the toothbrush away. Where before, for that lonely second, he could see something of himself in Gladio's eyes, now his mind perceived only a threat. He was half convinced Gladio might actually beat the truth out of him. Even if Gladio would never do it, his brain reacted with a flight response, though the instinct to protect himself from blows was far stronger.

_Hurt me.  Go ahead.  Do it._

"Please stop," Prompto said. "Please just go. I can't do this."

To his surprise, Gladio backed off. The bigger man got up, pulled the drain plug in the tub and sat on the edge in silence. It was so quiet, Prompto could hear the water running through the pipes.

"I get it," Gladio said after a few minutes. "And... you don't need to be ashamed, okay?"

Ashamed. He was so far beyond shame, there wasn't a word for it. He was decimated. Violated. Battered and guilty and torn into a hundred thousand pieces. His insides were all jagged edges and splinters and shards of glass. Shame didn't cover a fraction of it.

Gladio's head dropped. All Prompto could see of his face was a bit of his forehead, partially obliterated by strands of hair.

There it was again. Something Prompto understood. Shame. Defeat. Wounds caused by something other than weapons.

Whatever that something was, Prompto wished to avoid it, even if curiosity pricked at the edges of his thoughts. There was a story here, implied in the lingering silence, but it wasn't one Prompto wanted to unearth. Gladio getting his ass kicked was in no way comparable to what he went through.

"Did you hear me?" Gladio asked.

Prompto blinked and realized he'd zoned out and missed whatever Gladio said next. When he repeated it, Prompto wished he hadn't.

He couldn't breathe through the panic of hearing the word spoken out loud. He didn't confirm or deny but froze as it rebounded and echoed and wedged itself into every dark space in his head. It grew louder but less distinct until it dissolved in to nothing but static. Gladio's mouth moved, and the concern was back, but Prompto couldn't hear a word he said over the hiss and crackle of white noise and the rapid thud of his heartbeat.

Chilled to the bone, Prompto rose to his feet, the towel clutched around his waist, running only on adrenaline now, and walked out. He climbed into bed and closed his eyes against Gladio's footsteps on the carpet. Gladio said nothing but heaved a quiet sigh, shut off the light, and left.

 ** _...this is going to hurt_**.

Beneath the blankets, Prompto curled around himself like a fatally wounded man trying to keep his guts from spilling all over the ground.

Hurt, indeed.


	4. A Trigger For A Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a song by Royal Blood called "Out of the Black."
> 
> Thank you all for reading. So much. Really, really blown away by the response to this. I am truly humbled and flattered, so again: thank you.
> 
> (Also, please forgive any glaring typos. Uploaded the draft instead of the final edit, my WiFi went down, and I attempted to fix it on my phone. Yeah, not a great plan.)

_Before_...

* * *

Four times, Ardyn drowned him.

Four times, he brought Prompto back.

Prompto wished Ardyn let him stay dead.

His throat burned like he'd scrubbed it raw with coarse grit sandpaper. His sinuses, too. Not from screaming. He couldn't scream if he tried. Wouldn't matter anyway. The MT's wouldn't intervene, and no one who cared could hear him.

Whatever it was Ardyn wanted him to see, Prompto never saw it. Only images of the past and flashes of things that hadn't happened. That scruffy Noct in his King's robes didn't exist. The lips that kissed crushed-violet bruises never once touched his bare skin. He'd never set foot in the streets of a shattered Insomnia, never set eyes on that ruined throne room where a trembling, older Noctis waited in darkness.

He didn't even fight it the last time. Ardyn's hands pushed him beneath the surface, and Prompto closed his eyes and waited for the end to come.

It didn't.

Now he lay against Ardyn's chest, in the circle of his arms, too weak to fight and bitterly resenting the embrace. How many nights had he fallen asleep longing for the comfort of someone to hold onto? For someone to hold him like this?

Worst of all was the comfort it brought him. The warmth of Ardyn's skin against his cheek, the gentle sweep of fingertips up and down his arm, the firmness of the embrace - it could all be mistaken for tenderness. If he closed his eyes, it wasn't hard to picture himself relaxing into Noctis in that big tub in his apartment that Noctis never used, head against his shoulder, half-asleep, warm, and happy and safe.

Ardyn was not Noctis. Prompto would do well to remember that, but as weak as he was, as drained and defeated and tired, all he could do was accept it without a fight.

Fingertips brushed along Prompto's collarbone and he heard a sound like the crackle of fire consuming dry wood and paper, the low rumble of Gladio's voice as he spoke quietly with Iggy, the roar of waves against the cliffs below Cape Caem, the purr of the Regalia's finely tuned engine.

Prompto focused on those sounds and found solace in them. Things he knew, the sounds of what he loved replaced Ardyn's increasingly insistent touch. He stepped outside of himself and breathed in the scent of smoke and melting fat on the camp stove. He caressed the soft feathers of the chocobo dozing at his back and took in the view of the night sky.

That sky was not filled with stars but a wide-screen image of himself as seen from above, nestled in Ardyn's arms, their mouths locked together in a kiss too passionate to fit the scene. Ardyn's hands wandered over freckled, pale skin and dipped beneath the water. The Prompto above whimpered softly, then offered a brittle-voiced cry to the Gods.

 _That can't be real. Please, gods, don't let it be real. Let it be a bad dream. Only a dream_.

He shivered and shook his head at the scene, to deny it was him. That couldn't be happening to him.

"You okay, Prompto?" Noctis asked.

Beside the fire, Prompto's teeth chattered. His thighs quivered.

"Just caught a chill," he said distantly.

"Some hot chocolate, perhaps?" Ignis asked.

Prompto nodded. Hot chocolate. Yes. Good.

"Whatever you've got cooking would be great too," Prompto said. "I'm starving."

Prompto above was laid back now, his head against the metal edge of the tub, eyes half lidded and his dick hard. Ardyn knelt between his legs, a cruel smile painted on his lips.

_That's not real._

"You let him get the upper hand," Gladio said. "Wuss."

"I didn't-" Prompto began, but Ignis handed him a mug and disappointment flashed in his eyes. "I can't help it."

"Have you lost your will to fight?" Ignis asked.

Warmth bled into Prompto's cold hands as he wrapped them around the mug and sipped it, his eyes still on the scene above.

"I'm tired, guys. So goddamn tired..."

"You seem to be enjoying it," Ignis remarked.

"I'm not-"

As if to prove him wrong, Prompto above gasped, his head tipped back, lips parted and his face a perfect snapshot of a young man lost in pleasure.

"No. That's not me."

"How could you?" Noct asked sourly. "With him?"

_How could you?_

That thought propelled him straight back into reality. His mind returned to his body just as the head of Ardyn's cock pressed into him. Big hands and the fear of slipping beneath the surface held Prompto immobile, and there came a sharp pinch as fragile skin tore to allow Ardyn space.

Prompto wanted to go back to the campfire and the warmth, back to the scent of meat cooking on the grill and his friends around him. This, he couldn't take. Not by himself.

His chin trembled violently as Ardyn pushed further in, and he was awash in conflicting sensations, the most confusing of all his own arousal. He didn't want this. He didn't ask for this. He didn't like this. Why was his body responding?

_Forgive me, Noct._

_Please forgive me._

Ardyn teased his lips apart and slid his thumb into Prompto's mouth as he began to thrust in earnest. Somehow, that was more invasive than the rest. He wanted to bite down, draw blood, make Ardyn scream, but he feared drowning more. He couldn't count on being saved a fifth time.

Each thrust was like a bass drum beat in his eardrums. Steady. Rhythmic. Gradually, Ardyn's pace increased, became rough and uneven and painful.

It was  _unbearable_.

He had no voice left to scream. Only an inhuman, croaking rattle issued from his damaged and waterlogged vocal chords. All he could do was try not to slide beneath the surface again, but he lost control of even that when Ardyn grasped his hips. Fingernails dug into his skin, Ardyn's grip like a vice, and his thrusts were so urgent now, Prompto was sure his insides were being torn apart or burned by acid.

This had to end, right? It couldn't go on forever.

Maybe it was all just a bad dream. He'd wake up on the train, covered in sweat and shaking, the mood still tense and sad, but he'd wake up safe with his friends by his side. All he had to do was close his eyes...

His head began to slip and he braced his bound hands against the bottom to keep himself afloat, but the strain and the motion soon had his shoulders singing in pain and the muscles of his back cramping.

_He's going to fuck me to death. I'm going to die like this._

Suddenly, freezing to death on the tundra didn't seem so bad.

* * *

Only half awake, Prompto watched Ignis, who was, so far, unaware that Prompto wasn't asleep. His hair wet, clad only in a towel, Ignis sorted through his belongings, relying on touch alone to identify articles of clothing. His hands moved over fabrics and buttons, waistbands and hems until he found the items he preferred, then placed a neatly folded pile of rejects back in his bag.

Ignis dropped the towel and Prompto was treated to a full-frontal view. Prompto blushed furiously as he took in long, lean but muscular legs, narrow hips, abs to die for, and a soft cock of enviable length.

Prompto should have made some noise to alert Ignis that he was awake. Ignis was modest. Proud. Though all pretense of modesty had been lost in the days on the road, Prompto felt like a dirty pervert for checking him out and getting low-key turned on, but he couldn't take his eyes off him.

It wasn't that Prompto found Ignis attractive, though Ignis was an attractive man. He'd always thought of Ignis as something of an older brother. The idea of Ignis as a sexual partner never crossed Prompto's mind.

Until now.

And Gods, did he hate himself for it.

Ignis pulled on a pair of fitted boxers that left nothing to the imagination, crossed the room and switched on the coffee pot, then sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks.

Prompto wondered what Ignis would be like in bed. Aggressive? Passionate? Sweet? Was he even into it?

He closed his eyes and imagined the cold edge of Ignis' blade held against his throat, his face pressed into brick, and -

_Fuck no._

Prompto shot up and out of the bed and into the bathroom. He ignored Ignis' concerned call behind him, locked the door, and turned on the sink. He splashed cold water on his face until the urge passed, but traces of it lingered in his veins as he sat on the edge of the tub and dried his face with a hand towel.

_The fuck is wrong with me?_

He stayed in the bathroom for a while trying to focus on something besides that mental picture, but his mind kept drifting back. Iggy's big, graceful hands on his hips, his mouth on the back of Prompto's neck -

 _Stop_.

It was futile to stop. Now that the thought was in his head, he couldn't get it out.

Could a fantasy really hurt? No one would have to know.

Someone banged ferociously on the bathroom door and Prompto jumped to his feet, sure somehow, some way, he'd been busted.

Doing what, exactly, he wasn't sure.

"You alive in there?"

Goddamn it.

"Y-yeah. Be out in a minute."

Frustrated beyond belief and too ashamed of the unwanted fantasy to finish himself off, Prompto turned on the shower to the coldest setting, stripped bare, and stood under the freezing water until his lust died.

It was a slow, painful death. Unsatisfied, unfulfilled and annoyed with Gladio's overbearing concern, Prompto dried off, dressed and put his hand on the door knob.

Their voices carried through the closed door and Prompto hesitated.

"He's not Noct," Ignis said. "Prompto won't respond to your way of doing things. All it will do is push him further away."

"Then what are we supposed to do, Iggy?" Gladio asked. "It sure as hell looked like he was trying to drown himself last night. If I hadn't dragged him out, I don't think he would have come up for air. That doesn't worry you?"

"I am very concerned about him, but what Prompto needs is time to sort through his feelings, on his own," Ignis said. "In the meantime, all we can do is remind him that we'll be there if he needs to talk. We can't force it."

Prompto bit down on his lip and leaned his forehead into the door, praying that Gladio kept his suspicions to himself.

"Iggy, I think it was worse than he's letting on," Gladio said.

"In what way?"

"Same thing you suspect," Gladio said. "I know it's crossed your mind."

Prompto couldn't let this conversation go any further. He opened the door, taking care to bang it on his way out into the hall. The conversation came to a screeching halt and the both turned their heads toward him, a pair of chocobos in the headlights or children that had been caught raiding the cookie jar. They both looked so damn guilty, Prompto wanted to turn around and run away.

On the table, bacon sizzled on the camp stove, fresh coffee brewed in the pot.

He had two choices: Flee and confirm their suspicions, or put on a smile and pretend he was just fine. He flicked his gaze from one to the other. This choice was a no-brainer.

"Oh man, that smells good, Iggy," he said, careful to inject a smile into his voice. "I'm starving."

He wasn't. The thought of food turned his stomach, but happy, mentally sound Prompto was always ready for a meal.

"I'm pleased to hear it," Ignis said. "You haven't eaten much in weeks."

"Guess my appetite came back," Prompto said. "Bound to happen eventually, right?"

"You sound as though you're feeling better as well."

He could do this. He could fake it well enough to keep them off his back. Gods knew, he'd done it plenty in the past.

"Eh, enough moping around, you know?" Prompto said. "Gotta keep moving forward."

"Indeed," Ignis said. "I'm glad to hear it."

Gladio grunted and watched Prompto, unsmiling with his arms crossed over his chest. Prompto grinned back like he hadn't a care in the world.

"Morning, big guy."

Gladio grunted again. Prompto forced himself to keep smiling. Ignis couldn't see him, but Gladio could and remained unconvinced.

"You missed the last half of the meeting," Gladio said.

"Got bored."

"Cor wanted to talk to you."

"I'll get with him today," Prompto said. "Hey, Iggy, can I help you with anything?"

"I've got this handled," Ignis said. "However, if you'd like hot sauce for your eggs, it's in the grocery bag in the corner."

Prompto got up, glad for something to do, and dug through the bag on the floor. He found the hot sauce and set it on the table.

"I don't know how you can ruin perfectly good eggs like that," Gladio said. Some of the suspicion was gone, but he kept a close watch. "It's like putting ketchup on steak."

"I like what I like, dude," Prompto said easily. "So, what else did I miss? What's the plan?"

"You'd know if you stuck around."

"You know me. Can't sit still," Prompto said.

Gladio poured himself a cup of coffee and considered Prompto. His eyes fell on the missing leather bracelet on his wrist and the code print it was supposed to conceal. Prompto resisted the urge to hide it. They knew. There was no point, but it still made him nervous.

"Iggy's gonna handle some research," Gladio said. "I'm gonna handle supplies for now."

"And me?"

"You're gonna work with Cor for a while. Give him a hand training the volunteers," Gladio said. "It'll give you a chance to get your head on straight."

Prompto bristled and his fake smile fell. He wasn't sure why it bothered him, but it did. Getting a chance to work with Cor seemed like an opportunity to learn how to better defend himself, but it also felt like they didn't have enough faith in him to give him a bigger task. Like they didn't trust he could handle himself, like they wanted to leave him here, in the safety of the lights where he couldn't fuck up.

"I don't need a babysitter," Prompto said.

"Cor doesn't babysit," Gladio said. "And getting people trained is just as important as everything else."

Prompto held back his irritation, pasted on a smile and accepted a plate of bacon, eggs, and toast from Ignis. He doused everything in hot sauce and forced himself to choke down every last bite. It tasted of ash and something bitter he didn't want to think about.

The conversation turned to other things. Ignis' plans to dig through Lestallum's historical archives, Gladio's run out to Meldacio. Dave's hunt for survivors. Prompto tuned it out and watched a single moth flit around the wall sconce.

Under the table, his knees knocked together as he tried to repress thoughts of cold steel sliding over his skin.

* * *

Prompto didn't seek out Cor right away. He wandered the back alleys of Lestallum for a couple of hours, his breakfast heavy as a stone in his belly, and filled with a deep paranoia that he was being followed.

Was that man in the striped pants Ardyn in disguise? What about that woman in the dingy black and white scarf? Were those footsteps behind him? That shadow bleeding across the stone steps, was that him? Was that laugh familiar?

None of them paid him any mind. No one was following him.

He wound up in the market, not because he needed anything, but because paranoia got the better of him. He needed witnesses. Just in case the logical part of his brain was wrong.

People milled about the aisles and Prompto perused without any actual interest in buying anything unless someone was selling comic books. He could use the distraction, but it was the usual fare. Sundries and edibles and curatives. Clothing, assorted weaponry, accessories, hygiene products.

He was so engrossed in the dull roar of haggling and conversation that he didn't notice the man at his side at first.

"You all right, son?"

Prompto jumped, stumbled back, and nearly tripped over a bag of wheat.

"Man, Dave. Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"I been walkin' beside you for a couple minutes now," Dave said. "You was in your own little world."

"Sorry. A lot on my mind."

"S'pose that's true of all of us," Dave said.

"Yeah, I guess so," Prompto agreed. "What are you up to?"

"Tryin' to find Miss Cindy an escort out to Hammerhead," Dave said. "She's gonna build us some special headlights that are real bright, but all her stuff's out there."

"Is that safe?" Prompto asked. "I mean, Hammerhead's in the middle of nowhere. And it's dark."

"Place's got a real good generator, once we get it up and runnin'," Dave said. "A lot of the hunters from Leide are planin' on usin' it as an outpost, so it'll be about as safe as you can expect under the circumstances."

Prompto rubbed his code print and considered that. Hammerhead was as far away from Ignis and Gladio as he could get. Nobody would be looking over his shoulder. Nobody would question everything he did or act like he was going to throw himself into the rift.

"I'll do it," he said. "I'll go with her."

Dave rubbed his chin and looked Prompto over.

"I know you got a lot of huntin' under your belt," Dave said. "But are you sure you can handle it by yourself?"

"I can handle it," Prompto said. "You can trust me. I won't let anything happen to her."

"Well, alright. Let me give Cor a holler," Dave said. "Gimme five minutes."

"You got it," Prompto said.

He browsed a little more, purchased some elixirs and potions, a cleaning kit for his guns, and traded some old coins for a replacement for his old, fraying, and battle-worn camera strap. When he turned around to see if Dave was off the phone, Cor was with him.

"Are you absolutely sure you can handle this?" Cor asked.

"More than sure," Prompto said. "You can count on me, sir."

Cor seemed to have doubts.

"Come on. Gimmie a chance," Prompto said. "I won't let you down. Promise."

"Alright," Cor said. "Get your things and meet me in the parking lot by the overlook in an hour."

* * *

 

Prompto returned to the Levelle and walked right into a knock-down, drag-out argument between Iris and Gladio. Both were red-faced and tense and spoke in raised voices typical of a pissed-off Amicitia. Prompto edged into the room like a small animal of prey hoping the hungry behemoth wouldn't notice him and rip him apart.

"I can do this, Gladdy," Iris insisted. "You know I can."

"You're too young," Gladio said. "You don't have enough experience yet."

"And how am I supposed to get experience if you put me on lock-down?"

"You're not on lock-down," Gladio said. "You're fifteen and you shouldn't have to go out there and fight. Not until you know what you're doing."

"I'll be with Cor," Iris said. "It's not like I'm running off chasing after iron giants all by myself."

"No, Iris," Gladio said. "I said no. You can help Iggy with his research and train. Maybe in a couple of years, if Noct's not back you can take a crack at hunting. Until then, my answer's no."

He turned from her and went to the window and stared out at the fountain below. Prompto took the opportunity while his back was turned to grab his bag from under the bed.

"This is so unfair!"

"NO!" Gladio roared and stalked across the room toward his much smaller but equally stubborn sister. "I couldn't live with myself if something happened to you, Iris. You're not ready."

"Give her a chance," Prompto said before he could stop himself. "She's no pushover."

"Thank you, Prompto," Iris said. "At least someone's got my back."

"You stay out of this," Gladio said.

Prompto held up his hands and discreetly started to pack his bag. The last thing he needed now was to be in the middle of an Amicitia family brawl.

"You don't get to dictate everyone's lives, Gladdy," Iris said. "You've never treated me like I can't handle myself before. Why are you starting now?"

"Because you don't know what's out there."

"The hell I don't," Iris said.

"And because you're still a kid."

"Dad would let me."

Gladio winced like she'd sucker punched him in the nose. He turned back around, an uncharacteristic hurt in his eyes.

"Yeah? Well, dad's gone, and I'm responsible for you now, and I said no."

"You can't stop me," she said. "I'm doing this, with or without your approval."

"Like hell you are."

"You're the one who taught me that no one's going to fight my battles for me," Iris said. " _Stand up for yourself, Iris. Fight back, Iris. Don't be a pushover, Iris. You're a big girl. Act like it_. Now you're taking all that back?"

"This is different," Gladio said. "We're not talking sparring matches or low-level monsters with four other people to back you up."

"I don't want to argue with you," she said.

"Then do as I say."

"Why are you being like this?"

"Because I don't want you to get hurt."

"Picked a fine time for that, didn't you?" Iris said bitterly. "Where were you when Insomnia fell? Where were you when I found out dad died? Or when they came for Jared? Hmm? Where were you, Gladdy?"

"You know where I was and why I couldn't be there."

"Exactly," Iris said. "You had a duty to protect Noct. You didn't hear me complain. I suffered through it without your help, just like an Amicitia's supposed to. And now you're acting like I'm some fragile little princess? Well let me tell you something -"

Gladio opened his mouth to retort, but Iris cut him off.

"I'm an Amicitia, just like you," she said. "I have a duty to see this thing through, just like you. Why should you be the only one to make dad proud?"

Gladio couldn't have looked more shocked if Iris hauled off and backhanded him. Prompto silently agreed with her but didn't chime in. For as small as she was, Iris was a tough kid.

Prompto remained nearly invisible to them for the duration of the fight, but as he zipped his bag and slung it over his shoulder, Gladio zeroed in and narrowed his eyes.

"The hell do you think you're doing?"

"I'm, uh, gonna escort Cindy out to Hammerhead."

"Says who?"

"Says you worry about your own stuff, big guy," Prompto retorted. "I've got the Cor Leonis stamp of approval on this, so I don't really need yours."

"You're not going," Gladio said. "Neither of you is leaving Lestallum until I think you're ready."

Prompto gritted his teeth and dropped his bag. He stepped up, toe to toe, unable to believe the size of his own balls, and glared up at Gladio.

"I've faced bigger and badder than you, dude," Prompto said quietly. "You think you know what it was like for me? Guess again."

Gladio leaned down until his face was an inch from Prompto's.

"I'm not letting you go while you've got some kind of death wish."

"If I had a death wish, I would have made him kill me," Prompto said and shoved Gladio away from him. "Maybe I should have."

He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder again. He turned for the door, brushed off Iris' hand of support, and wished he wasn't leaving on this note. It would be easier with Gladio on his side, but he could live with not having his support.

"I know he raped you."

Prompto's heartbeat slowed, his breathing evened out, and the room went dead silent. The blood in his veins turned glacial and he heard the wind howling across the frozen tundra and felt the bite of sleet against his bare cheeks. Miles and miles of frozen wasteland ahead, miles of rocky and treacherous terrain behind him. Gladio, blocking his path.

Something in his chest blasted apart like brick struck by a mortar round and the shrieking siren of the Magitek lab rose up inside his skull. He turned to face the bigger man, sickened, enraged, and most of all tired, as Gladio's face morphed into Besithia, into Ardyn, and back again.

 _He's not your enemy_.

But he was. He'd gotten too close to the truth, stepped over the line, and pushed Prompto too far. He presumed things he knew nothing about. Picked at scabs until they started to bleed.

Prompto's gun materialized in his hand and he lifted it without thought, took aim, and pulled the trigger. His hand never wavered.

Iris screamed, Gladio jumped, and the bullet lodged in the wall behind Gladio's head. Bits of broken plaster rained down against the wood floor, a soundless clatter in the deafening wake of gunfire. Prompto breathed in the familiar scent of gunpowder and took comfort in it.

"What the fuck, Prompto?!"

"Say that to me again," Prompto said coldly, "and next time I won't miss."

Seconds stretched in to minutes, the tension in the room so thick it would take Ignis' sharpest blade to cut through it. Prompto's insides were steel and ice. He felt nothing. Not fear. Not shame. Not concern.

Nothing.

Iris stepped between them and pushed Prompto's hand toward the floor. The gun remained in his grip, but he didn't fight Iris' intervention, but neither did he look at her to gauge her reaction to Gladio's accusation.

"Even if it isn't true," Iris said quietly, "that was a really cruel thing to say, Gladdy. You, of all people, should know better."

A look passed between them, Iris' face full of anger and disappointment, Gladio's full of guilt.

"I'm sorry."

Prompto's gun de-materialized and he thumbed the strap of his bag. Gladio held his hands up, abandoning the fight.

"Do what you want," he said. "I've said my piece."

"It's about time you got off your high horse," Iris muttered.

Gladio folded his arms over his chest and looked away.

"It's only because I care, Iris."

"Yeah," she said. "About the wrong things."

"Iris-" Gladio started, but Prompto cut him off.

"See ya around, big guy," Prompto said. "Iris, you coming?"

She followed him from the room and out into the square. He didn't know what her plans were, but he was glad she stood up for herself. She was a strong fighter who could probably beat Prompto's ass at hand-to-hand if it came to a serious fight. With some practice and some tips from the Marshal, she'd be fine.

"Should I bother asking if you're okay?"

"I really wish everyone would stop asking," he said. "I'm still breathing. That should be good enough, right?"

"Okay," Iris said. "I won't ask."

"Thanks."

"But... he shouldn't have said that to you," she said. "I hate that he says stuff like that. He thinks it's motivational or something. Like, you need a kick in the ass so he's going to say something mean to snap you out of it."

"Worked for Noct," Prompto said with a sigh, and thought of the conversation he'd overheard earlier. "A few times, actually..."

"It doesn't work for everyone," she said.

Prompto stopped walking.

"Iris?" he said. "You should really go back and talk to him. Clear things up. In case something happens, you don't want that to be your last conversation with him."

"I will," she said. "But, we both need to cool off first. We'd just end up fighting again."

"Walk me down to the overlook?" he asked.

"Sure," she said and linked her arm through his. "This whole thing's been so crazy..."

Iris didn't speak again until they arrived in the parking lot.

"Hey Prompto? Don't be too mad at him, okay?" she said. "I know he's pushing too hard like always, but it's only because he cares about you."

Prompto swallowed around the lump in his throat and tried not to hear Gladio's blunt accusation in his head again.

"And... if it's true?" she said. "I'm sorry. No one deserves that."

A delayed reaction to what he'd just done sent a ripple of weakness through the muscles of his legs. His stomach twisted and his heartbeat thundered in his ears. Had he actually  _shot_  at Gladio? What the fuck was wrong with him?

_**How could you?** _

Better that he was leaving.

"Iris, don't," he warned. He hated the way his voice shook. "Thanks, but... just forget you heard it, okay? He's just trying to rattle me or something 'cause I'm not ready to talk about it and it wasn't-"

Iris shook her head and squeezed his arm.

"Enough said. Oh, before I forget, I got you something."

Prompto worried it might be a stuffed moggle, like the one she gave Noctis. The thing was dead useful, but cumbersome and a little tough to pack for light travel. She retrieved something small from her pocket and placed it in his gloved palm. He peered at it in the streetlight and smiled. For real this time.

Still a moogle, but in charm form.

"You didn't have to do that," Prompto protested.

"It's for protection, okay?" she said. "Attach it to your vest and it'll give you a small boost in status effect resistance."

He attached it to the button on his pocket, then pulled Iris in for a hug.

"Thank you," he said. "You're awesome, dude."

"Just look out for yourself, okay? I'd hate for Gladdy to be right."

"You too, buddy," he said. "You go out there and kick some ass and prove him wrong."

"Oh, I plan to make him take it  _all_  back," she said. "Every last word."

He patted her back, pecked her cheek, then let her go.

"I hope you do," he said. "I really hope you do."


	5. A World of Bad Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .
> 
> Chapter title from the Bellhound Choir's "Bad Dreams." 
> 
> Thanks for all the kudos and comments, guys. I'm still amazed by it. So for serious, thanks.

_Before_...

* * *

It was only once Ardyn was gone, leaving Prompto in a tiny, dark maintenance closet, his wrists strung up somewhere above his head and chained to an o-ring in the ceiling, that Prompto allowed himself to weep. He sobbed quietly and bitterly for his lost dignity, his pride, and purely out of self-pity.

The lingering pain, he could deal with. It was the acute sense of violation and the understanding that he was completely alone that overwhelmed him. His skin crawled with the remnants of Ardyn's touch, and his mind filled with absolutes he wasn't sure were true or not. Everything was all jumbled up, as if all his senses were thrown out of whack.

The jangling of his chains smelled like rust. The draft from beneath the door sounded like church bells. The vague scent of machine oil and exhaust tasted like acid. Every time he heard the MT's footsteps outside the door of this small prison, he smelled generic shampoo, dust, and snow.

It was like his mind was coming apart at the seams.

Parts of his physical form actually _were_.

Never mind the confusing ache in his groin.

_Finish what you started, asshole._

That thought sickened him. He never wanted Ardyn near him again. Nothing the man had done to him was particularly pleasurable, but it left him intensely frustrated, like being interrupted while jerking off.

Ignis would tell him that stimulation was stimulation. That a body's response was not always intellectual. That was a logical explanation. It made sense. But it didn't put out the flames of humiliation or shame at being left wanting to finish the job.

Fuck, all he needed was ten minutes and a free hand. Instead, he had to suffer.

For as exhausted as he was, Prompto didn't think he was ever going to be able to sleep here. The MT's posted at the door had him too keyed up. Ardyn wasn't finished with him, and he was out there, somewhere.

Never mind the uncomfortable and awkward position he was in. Wedged somewhere between crates and shelving, on his knees, his arms twisted up behind him. The opposite of their previous position, his muscles and tendons on fire. No way to get comfortable. Nothing to chase away the cold. No comfort to be found here. Truly, he'd rather face a trio of Red Giants alone than spend another second in this hell.

"Your friends should arrive in Tenebrae within the hour," Ardyn told him either minutes or hours ago. "It's another two days to our present location. Imagine how much fun we can have together in that time."

Forty-eight hours was the best case scenario. More likely, he was looking at two and a half or three days before anyone came for him.

If they came for him. Until they did, he was on his own.

Prompto was familiar with loneliness. For too many years, it was his natural state of being. All those quiet hours spent by himself, eating empty calories to fill the holes in his life as he reviewed the day's snapshots of clouds and stray cats and graffiti without a soul around to talk to.

As starkly lonely as his childhood was, it didn't stack up to how completely abandoned he felt now. No one knew where he was. He wasn't sure if they would even look for him here. Though he remembered well the shocked terror on Noct's face as he fell from the train, he also remembered the things he said and did before that. He couldn't help but believe they'd gone on to Tenebrae without him, glad to be rid of him.

He hoped it wasn't true. He hoped it was all part of Ardyn's game. Another illusion. He hoped Noct saw through it.

Except.

There was still the matter of what he was and where he'd come from. He'd hoped their friendship was solid enough to get past it. Now there was this. He couldn't ever tell anyone about what Ardyn had done.

Prompto eventually did sleep, and he dreamed. Not of Ardyn or the nightmare he'd been living in for too many days to count, but of Luna. Lady Lunafreya, whom he'd never gotten the chance to meet, in her wedding dress, the pristine white silk streaked with tendrils of red, her face battered and bruised and her hair in wet, seaweed-like tangles against her shoulders. Tiny – no, _Pryna_ , at her mistresses side, licking blood from the cobblestones, her muzzle stained and dripping. In one hand, Luna held the blade that ended her life. In the other, a crushed sylleblossom.

"Choose," she said. "One or the other."

He didn't understand. What was the difference between a bloodied blade and ruined beauty?

Then he woke, with the scent of sylleblossoms in the stale air around him and the taste of blood on his lips. He licked at it and felt a twinge of mild pain. He'd bitten through in his sleep.

Another eternity passed before the door opened. The weak orange light from the hall stung his eyes, but he recognized the shape on the threshold as someone other than Ardyn. Wild hope buoyed him and he peered around the man's legs to see if the others were with him.

"Gladio?" he croaked. Gods, his throat hurt. "That really you, big guy?"

"On your feet," Gladio said. "Get your head in the game."

Prompto hunched forward and struggled to move his legs. He'd sat there so long, both were numb.

"Don't think I can, buddy," Prompto said weakly. "Sorry dude. Been a rough couple days."

"Gods, you really are useless, you know that?"

Something about his tone was off. He looked like Gladio. He sounded like Gladio. Was he still sore over the whole deal in Cartanica? Still pissed Prompto stepped in to protect Noct? Angry he told him off about Iggy?

_"Lay off, he's trying, alright?"_

_"He's going to get himself killed."_

"Always falling down, getting yourself into trouble," Gladio said. "I don't know why the hell we bother with you."

Prompto sucked in a sharp breath. He couldn't argue. He'd been wondering the same thing for years.

"I didn't ask to get pushed off a train, dude," Prompto said. "Excuse me if it fucked me up a little bit!"

"And how the hell did you let that happen?" Gladio asked. Big hands gripped Prompto under his armpits and lifted him to his feet. "You let him get the upper hand, like always. Never should have let you come with us. All you do is get in the way."

"Noct wanted me to," Prompto said in a small voice.

Right? Noct wanted him to come along. He asked if Prompto would be a groomsman. Got fitted for official garb and everything. Hell, someone thought he was worth it. He got to train with the Crownsguard. Maybe not long enough to really be one, but still.

"Yeah. And look where it got him."

Prompto's legs gave out, his feet and calves tingling as blood returned to them. Gladio caught him and held him up.

Something was wrong. Prompto couldn't put his finger on what, but something was really wrong here.

"Where's Noct and Iggy?"

"They got held up."

Gladio pushed him back against the shelves and Prompto yelped as the edge of one cut into a tender spot on his lower back. Spirals of pain bled up and down his sciatic nerve and left him half paralyzed.

"Watch it, dude," Prompto said. "Close quarters in here."

Gladio didn't apologize. He pinned him there and his hands slid down Prompto's torso to his hips and he leaned in close like he was going to kiss him.

"What are you doing?" Prompto asked, but in that second, it occurred to him that Gladio smelled wrong. "Where the hell is Noct?"

He smelled not of the musky, spicy aftershave and wood fire Prompto was used to but of melted wax and dust and generic shampoo.

"I told you. They got held up, now quit squirming," Gladio said. "Tryin' to get you out of here."

Above Prompto's head, the chains rattled and his mouth filled with the taste of semen and blood. For as much bath water as he'd barfed up, that taste should have been long gone. Queasy, Prompto stilled and tried not to breathe in that odd scent on Gladio's skin.

_You're not Gladio, are you?_

The chain spilled to the floor with a musical clatter and Prompto's arms, weak from being suspended over his head and bound behind his back, screamed in pain. He made a sound that was almost a whine, not quite a grunt, and Gladio sneered.

"Turn around."

Prompto obeyed. Gladio tested the lock on the manacles around his wrists, fumbled with them, and cursed to himself. A minute later, there was a metallic click and Prompto's wrists were free.

"Better?"

His back and shoulders were awash in pain, but the good kind. The kind that brought relief, even if both hands were now numb and he couldn't raise his arms if he tried.

He slumped to his knees again, hit the concrete hard, and Gladio lifted him to his feet. This time, he smelled like he should. Spice. Campfire. Sweat.

It was just his out-of-order brain, making things into things they weren't.

He almost sobbed with relief. Almost kissed Gladio on the mouth. His body was a wasteland, but he was free.

He'd been saved.

* * *

Prompto was relieved to learn Cindy was driving. He had a hard enough time piloting the Regalia the one time Ignis let him have a go at the wheel. There was no way he'd manage Cindy's tow truck without wrecking.

She wasn't too happy about it, but he needed his hands free to aim at anything blocking the road. Hard enough to drive. Driving and shooting at the same time would be impossible.

"Don't stop for anything," Cor said. "Unless you absolutely have to."

"S'pose I could run 'em down if I had'ta," Cindy said. "Them big ones, though, it'll take more than my truck to take 'em out."

"Go around them if you can," Cor says. "Just avoid unnecessary conflict. And Prompto? I trust you've got this."

"Y-yes, sir," Prompto said. "I'll get her there safe."

"Keep me updated," Cor said.

Still shaken from his encounter with Gladio, Prompto climbed into the passenger side as Cindy started the truck. The rumble of its engine sent a shiver up his spine. Reminded him of something.

 _No. Don't think about that_.

He retrieved his gun and took comfort in the soft shimmer of the armiger. It meant Noct was still with them. Wherever he was now, he was still with them and that was something, at least.

Noct.

_Don't think about him._

There was nothing safe he could think about, was there? Nothing beautiful left unstained. Nothing good to hold onto. Everything was shit. Even his friendships. He'd fucked that up, didn't he? By pulling a gun on a guy who, for all his gruffness, truly only wanted to help.

He put a hand to his face as they exited the tunnel and into a darkness so deep, Prompto was almost sure he was back in the Keep listening to the daemons slither around in the shadows, just beyond the light of his cage.

Every hair on his body lifted and he felt the chill wind of Gralea all the way to the marrow in his bones. The cab of the truck seemed to be shrinking, the air inside stale and reeking of diesel fuel.

Maybe, this wasn't such a good idea.

Maybe not, but he didn't tell Cindy to turn around. He'd rather suffer through this than have to face anyone and admit he was a coward. Afraid of shadows, still afraid of everything, after all the hell he'd been through.

But it was like he said to Gladio back at the hotel. He'd faced bigger and badder. Worse things than a few Daemons. Barbarus and Immortalis and Besithia. His own dark side.

Ardyn.

He would tell no tales, share no stories, entertain no curious minds, but the fact remained, he faced it and lived. There was nothing _left_ to be afraid of.

That was what he told himself, anyway.

"How about you find us some music to listen to?" Cindy said. "Should be able to pick up stations outta Lestallum all the way to the border if we're lucky."

"Sure," Prompto said and reached for the dial. "What kind of music are you into?"

"Just about anything will do," she said. "So long as you can dance to it."

Prompto actually smiled. The thought of Cindy dancing was too good to feel bad about.

"Dancing, hunh?"

"I ain't real good at it," she said. "But after a few beers it don't matter how good you are. Holly an' me go out every now and then. Or we used to. Ain't been much dancin' lately."

"Not been much of anything good lately," Prompto said quietly. "Hey, maybe once this is all over we can all go out and dance. You know, to celebrate."

"Ain't no tellin' when it'll be over," she said, then laughed. "I might be old and gray and broke down like Paw-Paw by then."

Prompto forced a smile.

"You'd still be the hottest old lady at the club," he said, "No contest."

He slapped his hand over his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. He'd just called her hot. And _old_. To her face. She laughed like it was the funniest thing she'd heard in her life.

"Ain't you just as sweet as pie," she said. "Maybe I'll work on makin' me a souped-up walker, just in case."

Prompto relaxed, laughed, and settled back into his seat.

"You could put some of those fancy city hubcap spinners on it," Prompto said. "Maybe some lights."

"Now you're talkin'," she said. "But... I hope His Highness comes back real soon, though. I ain't likin' this drivin' in the dark thing at all."

Prompto was never a fan of driving after dark, either. Nothing had changed, except now he knew exactly what lurked in the absence of the light.

He turned the radio on to a station that played upbeat pop music at least two decades old. It was that or talk radio, and he'd heard enough about the situation for now.

It was bad out there. There were daemons. Volunteers were needed. Blah, blah, blah.

Enough.

"So, you got a girl?" Cindy asked conversationally.

"Me?" Prompto squeaked.

He couldn't believe she was asking. How many times had he wondered the same about her?

Then, he thought of Noctis.

And wanted nothing else.

"Nah," he said. "I prefer to keep my options open. You know how it is."

"Can't say as I do," Cindy said. "I ain't never been much for romance myself."

"No? How come?"

"A bunch of reasons, I guess," she said. "Ain't never met anyone I like better than I like cars, for starters. Treat a car right, and she ain't never gonna treat you bad. People... they let you down, even if you give it your all."

Something about that statement hurt. It was like a knife to the gut. It resonated all through his body like the hum of a tuning fork set against bone.

Like the buzz of a saw blade motor.

He was going to be sick. Too hot in here. Couldn't breathe.

Prompto rolled the window down and took a deep breath of the cool air. It washed over him, rumpled his hair and dried the sheen of sweat on his brow. Took away the crushing heat in his chest and drowned out the hum and the mechanical rumble inside his head.

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

He couldn't lose it here. Not now. But it was coming. He could feel it.  

Cindy laid her hand against his thigh and squeezed his knee. She said something he didn't hear over the roar of the wind -

_**...give in to me** _

or the pop song that hadn't been popular since he was a toddler.

It crashed over him like a wave, held him down and pulled him along the bottom like undertow. Everything went cold and stark white and he was sliding away from the world and into a dark chasm where the only things that existed were daemons and the MT's outside the door. Drowning again.

When the fog cleared and the screaming in his head stopped, he found himself in the foot well of the tow truck, curled into a ball with his arms clenched protectively over his head. His breaths were heavy pants, and the air seemed too thick to provide him much needed oxygen. In his chest, his heart threatened to self-destruct like an MT's magitek core.

Cindy grasped his wrist lightly. She shook him gently.

"Don't."

She let go.

Prompto tried to wedge himself further into that small space and forced himself to slow his breathing, to still his racing heart.

Gods. He couldn't live like this.

"Sweetie?"

Only the realization that the truck was idling brought Prompto out of his stupor. They couldn't stop. Not here, not now, no matter what.

"Keep driving," he said thickly. "Don't stop for me."

"Maybe I should take you back..."

_**...you really are useless** _

" _No_ ," he said. " _Drive_."

He felt the gears shift beneath him and the truck started to move. A second later Cindy cursed and something slammed into the passenger side.

Prompto gathered what little was left of his wits and crawled back into the passenger seat, still short of breath. His heart thundered for a different reason when he saw the Iron Giant lift its sword.

"Step on it, Cindy!" he shouted and rose to his knees, half out the window with his gun drawn.

He fired off a Starshell and the daemon screamed as light spilled down upon it. Blinded, maybe wounded, but it kept coming and took a hard swipe at the rear. It knocked the truck off course and Cindy struggled to keep the vehicle on the road.

"Hate these things," he muttered and withdrew his rifle. Leaning further out the window now, he took aim at its head and fired. His bullet hit its mark and the enraged daemon stormed toward them, the bass tones of its roar an uncanny vibration that cut through even the rumble of the truck's engine.

_"What the fuck, Prompto?"_

He shook off Gladio's horrified stare, slid all but his legs out the window and leaned back against the frame for support. He braced one foot against the seat and shouldered the rifle again. He aimed and fired twice. Both rounds found new homes in the daemon's head, but it brought its sword down against the tailgate with a sickening crunch.  Prompto grasped the side mirror to keep from being thrown from the truck.

"Hold tight," Cindy said. "This road ain't exactly straight and I can't be goin' back for you if you fall out."

Fair enough.

The Iron Giant began to chase them but it couldn't out-pace the truck. Prompto took one last shot at it for good measure before Cindy maneuvered around a bend in the road and it finally got up enough speed to leave the daemon behind.

Imps popped up in the road ahead and Cindy slowed. Prompto slid back into the cab and let the butt of his rifle rest against the floor beside his feet, at the ready should he need it again.

"Just run 'em over," Prompto said.

Her hands around the steering wheel were so tight, her knuckles were ghostly and her face was too pale in the light of the dash.

"You for real?"

"We'd never make it there if we didn't," Prompto said. "Just keep going. Pretend they're not there."

Advice he didn't follow inside the Keep. He could no more pretend the shadows weren't crawling with them than he could pretend everything inside him wasn't broken.

He ignored the sickening thumps as the truck plowed through them, tuned out the screams, and tried not to think of them as they once might have been. Not people. Not anymore.

Prompto kept watch, his muscles taut and his eyes peeled for any sign of a threat, but they seemed to fear the headlights and stayed clear. Beyond the barricades and guardrails, he saw flickers of blue and violet and magenta swarming like lightning bugs in the distance.

So many. Gods, where did they all come from?

It made him nauseous. All of it. _Everything_.

Without warning, his stomach rolled and he stuck his head out the window just in time. He vomited up bile and imagined tar and whatever was left in his stomach, which wasn't much. He retched until he started coughing, then dry heaved when there was nothing left.

For a few minutes, he let his head rest against the door, empty, but not purged. The cool metal felt good against his cheek. The wind filled his lungs until he wasn't on the verge of drowning anymore.

"You okay, sweetie?" She handed him a napkin from the Crow's Nest.

"Yeah," he said and wiped his mouth. "You ever fired a gun, Cindy?"

"Paw-Paw made sure of that," she said. "Ain't too bad a shot, neither."

He slid his Calamity across the bench seat. It didn't compare to his current arsenal, but it was still dead useful. The Calamity had seen him through some pretty rough battles. If it kept Cindy safe, he was happy to sacrifice it.

"Take it. Just in case," he said. "And... if I... freak out again, don't stop, okay? Just keep driving."

Cindy frowned at the windshield.

"You was screamin'," she said.

"I was?"

"Like someone was murderin' you."

Shit. Bad enough his friends all suspected he was on the verge of losing his mind. Now Cindy knew it, too.

The tops of his ears burned and his cheeks flushed and he looked out the window, half wishing the wind would suck him out into the night. Almost better to contend with the daemons all alone than face constant judgment.

He'd just have to do a better job of faking it.

"Must have fallen asleep. Had a nightmare or something."

Cindy cast him a sideways glance.

"I'm okay."

"Your buddy said you had a real bad time a while back."

Prompto focused on keeping his breathing even, but red crept into the edges of his vision.

"Who? Iggy?"

"The big one," Cindy said. She paused. "Gladio."

"Great," he muttered. Gladio and his big mouth. He didn't need to be telling people about Prompto's problems. Especially not her. "Just perfect."

"He didn't say what happened," she said. "Just that you got real roughed up by the Nifs and were havin' a hard time getting' through it."

One more reason to be pissed at Gladio.

"Guess maybe he was right," she said.

"Gladio doesn't know what he was talking about," Prompto said. "He doesn't know anything."

More Imps appeared in the road ahead and Cindy turned down the music. She made a face, squeezed her eyes shut, but rolled right over them. Prompto flinched at the sounds they made, but it was oddly satisfying. Like popping a blister.

"Speakin' from experience?" Cindy said, once the road was clear. "It ain't always easy to keep goin' after bad stuff happens. You got all these... questions, you know? Wonder what you did to deserve it. Why some people get to coast through life like they was born under a lucky star and all you get are four flat tires and a bunch of fouled spark plugs..."

Prompto smiled at the analogy, but it hit too close to home. She was always so cheerful and sweet. Hard to tell she'd seen some rough times, too, but he knew better.

"I ain't too fond of lookin' back," she said. "And I figure, you ain't gonna outrun the daemons if you keep lookin' over your shoulder to see how close they are. You just gotta keep your eyes forward and focus on the things you love until you ain't bleedin' every time you bump up against somethin' that reminds you of it."

That was exactly what it felt like. Except the bleeding had never stopped and he was hemorrhaging all over the place.

"How long was it before you were... okay?" he asked.

"Well, this ain't helpin' me none, but most days I don't even think about it no more," she said. "Havin' Paw-Paw around to keep me honest helped. Lord... I gave that poor man hell."

"I can't picture you being anything but nice," Prompto said.

"Trust me. I wasn't," she said with a soft laugh. "Pretty sure poor ole Paw-Paw had a mind to lock me in a closet and leave me there until I was forty."

Prompto cringed. Closets. Small, dark, cramped spaces...

_Stop it._

"I'd say you turned out all right."

"Suppose I did," she said. "You want my advice?"

He'd grown weary of everyone's advice. Of hearing the apologies and the sympathy and the coddling and being treated like he was damaged. He was, but it didn't do him any good to have everyone around him know it.

"Sure."

"Don't stuff it all down inside and pretend like it ain't a problem," she said. "I see you doin' that 'cause you think you gotta be tough, but what's tougher is havin' to deal with it on your own. If you gotta cry and scream and get drunk every night for a while to get it out, you go on and do it. But be smart about it. You ain't gonna help nothin' if all you're doin' is hurtin' yerself."

_**...you're only hurting yourself** _

But what if hurting himself was the only way to make it hurt less?

* * *

The radio station fizzled out as they approached the shuttered outpost near the border. Prompto switched it off when the voices and static started to resemble the phantom siren calls inside his head.

"Ain't too far now," Cindy said.

Twenty minutes and they'd be back to relative safety. It couldn't come too soon, either. The acid in Prompto's stomach demanded either food or a second round of barfing. He wasn't really sure which. Food sounded as unappealing as vomiting did.

He expected to see the lights of the Hammerhead before they got there, but darkness prevailed. As they approached the turn into the lot, only a single light was on, somewhere in back of the shop. Prompto heard shouts and felt the distinct bass-note bellow of a Red Giant well before they saw it.

A handful of hunters gathered around the beast, flashlights on and weapons drawn, but it was a fight they were losing, and losing fast.

"Holy mother of Shiva," Cindy breathed. "Cor said they got the lights on."

Prompto shifted in his seat and wrapped his hand around his rifle.

"Get us as close as you can," he said. "And turn the spotlight on."

"What are you gonna do?"

"They could use a hand," he said. "Besides. I've got something they don't."

"What's that?"

"A _bazooka_."

"Do I wanna know where you got hold of a bazooka?"

"You really don't," he said lightly. "A little closer?"

Cindy eased the nose of the tow truck into the lot and Prompto rose to a knee, slid his upper body out the window and climbed onto the roof.

This was risky, and probably really, really stupid, but he told himself it was no different than any of the other stupid, risky things he'd done in the last six months. Falling off the truck would probably hurt way less than falling off the train. He'd survive.

"Cindy, the spotlight!" he called.

The parking lot flooded with light and the daemon shrieked and seemed to shrivel, partially disabled and definitely wounded by the assault. Unfortunately, it blinded the hunters, too.

"Hey!" he shouted and aimed his pistol into the air, fired off a Starshell. From the Armiger, he retrieved the bazooka. "Get outta the way!"

The hunters took one look at him and backed away from the daemon. A few wisely chose to take refuge behind the stack of crates beside the diner. Others called out things he couldn't hear over the rumble of the tow truck.

He fired on the Red Giant and the recoil blew him back half a foot, but the blast hit it square in the chest. The combination of his Starshell and the bazooka round broke the daemon and sent it to its knees. It gave the hunters a chance to do some heavy damage before it righted itself with a furious roar.

It took a swipe at the gathering, upended an old pick-up truck, and one of the hunters went down screaming. Prompto wasn't close enough to offer first aid, and the others were too engaged in the fight to notice.

Poor guy. For now, he'd have to suffer or fix himself up.

Imps popped up and surrounded the party, and Prompto set about picking them off, one by one until the Red Giant extended its hand and that familiar ball of energy-sucking _whatever-it-was_ formed in its outstretched palm. Everything in its vicinity began to slide toward the beast. People. Crates. Debris. Even the truck was not immune.

Prompto felt himself sliding too. The gravitational pull dragged him down the windshield and onto the hood of the truck, where he braced one foot against the headlight casing to keep from slipping off onto the concrete.

As soon as it was over, Prompto called out another warning, sat up, and fired the bazooka again. This time, he was thrown back against the windshield and his head collided with the glass. He heard a crunch, a thready crackling, and gunshots.

It took him a second to realize none of those noises were inside his head. Nor was he fatally wounded.

The gunshots came from his left, close enough to be ear-splitting.

 _Cindy_.

She leaned out the driver's side window, her forearms braced against the side mirror, with the Calamity aimed at the Red Giant. Prompto gave her a grin and a thumbs up, rose back into a crouch and resumed his self-assigned task of picking off Imps while the hunters finished the job.

The Giant went down for good a few minutes later, and Prompto watched with both dread and fascination as wisps of miasma twined through the air and its form melted into shiny liquid like hot tar on the pavement. He'd seen it a hundred or more times by now, but it never failed to capture his attention, for better or worse.

For a second, his brain convinced him that if his feet touched the ground, he'd find himself sucked into that liquid blackness and would rise up some new and mindless entity the hunters would have to take down. That the poison Ardyn left behind made him something other than what he was. Infected. Scourged. On the verge of turning.

He was _not_ a daemon.

The ground would _not_ swallow him up. It never did when he truly wanted it to, anyway.

He leaned back, closed his eyes and took a breath. Snow fell all around him, the flakes icy cold against his flushed arms and face. It collected in his hair and the cold burned his sinuses and throat.

"Prompto?" Cindy asked. "You knock yourself out?"

"No," he said and opened his eyes. "It's..."

He wanted to ask her why it was snowing when it was so damn hot, but it wasn't snow at all.

It was ash.

In the shadows, in the alley between the Garage and the Shop, an all too familiar figure leaned against the tin wall. He tipped his hat and gave a slow clap for Prompto's performance, his smile benevolent, mocking, and cruel.

Prompto went to a knee in a second, lifted his rifle, and took the shot at Ardyn's head.

Ash fell all around him and the echo of his bullet rang out through the eternal night and came back distorted. His ears rang and his heart lodged in his throat as he peered through the scope and found nothing there in the alley but a shadow and miasma.


	6. Elegy for Thieves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading this. I never expected it to get this kind of attention and I'm overwhelmed by the response. So thank you, for real. You guys are amazing.

_Before..._

* * *

 

“Let's get moving.”

Prompto looked to Gladio, who stared back at him as lifelessly as an MT. He instinctively covered himself and tried not to shiver in the chill. He could be relieved as he liked to be free of his chains and his prison, but he wasn't going to last long without clothes or shoes.

Still, better to be naked as the day he hatched from a mad scientist's test tube than spend another second a captive subject to the whims of a lunatic. Escape was a priority. Clothing, more or less optional.

He followed Gladio into a narrow hallway. Emergency lighting threaded along the corridor, bright enough to illuminate the way, but not enough to chase the shadows from the edges. A hazy darkness spread out ahead of them. A lot of things could hide in the dark.

“This way,” Gladio said.

On bare feet, Prompto obediently followed.

Up ahead was a control room full of grainy, flickering security feeds. The cold light washed over him like a snowdrift and his gaze jumped from screen to screen.

Nothing moved in the rooms under surveillance. Not a single person. Not even an MT. The place was as abandoned as he felt.

“You know the way out, right?” Prompto asked.

“I got in, didn't I?” Gladio asked.

He had a point, but the place was a maze of corridors and dead ends. Easy to get lost or turned around. To find themselves trapped somewhere and surrounded, with no way to escape.

“Think we could find me some clothes? And maybe a weapon?”

“Let's focus on getting out first.”

“Sure. There'll totally be clothes waiting for me outside in the freezing cold. No problem.”

“I could just leave you here.”

“No!” Prompto shouted, then fell into a fit of coughing that almost sent him to his knees.

Gladio grasped his arm and steadied him. His grip was too hard and his fingers dug into tender, bruised skin.

 _Don't touch me, Gods_ don't.

“Don't... don't leave me,” Prompto wheezed.

He pulled away, steadied himself against a desk and fought back the urge to cough until he vomited up his lungs or purged himself of whatever was causing it. Gladio shuffled impatiently at his side. Grunted. Sighed.

“I know, I know,” Prompto said. “I'm useless.”

“Let's go.”

Prompto followed. Through narrow hallways and empty, paper-scattered offices, through banks of sleeping MT's, up and down stairs on shaking legs and numb feet. From an office, Prompto nabbed a lab coat and hastily pulled it on. It provided no warmth, but it gave him back a shred of dignity, and that was better than nothing.

Gladio hardly noticed.

After what felt like hours, they entered a familiar control room. Cold blue light. Grainy, flickering footage.

They were back where they started. They were going in circles.

Goddammit.

“Gladio-”

Gladio turned toward him with a leer, an ugly triumphant smile, and Prompto stepped back as gold bled into Gladio's amber eyes.

 _No_.

Mind playing tricks?

Or had he been duped?

“You're not Gladio,” Prompto accused.

“The hell're you talking about?”

The ends of Gladio's hair were tinged pinkish burgundy. His face began to wrinkle. Scars faded. No warm amber light left in his eyes, only sickly bile gold.

“Stay back,” Prompto warned. “Don't.”

“We don't have time for this, Prompto,” Gladio said.

Black tears streaked down Gladio's cheeks. The color drained from his face and black veiny lines slithered under the skin at his temples. He smelled dust and candle wax. Shampoo.

Prompto took another step back and sized up his choices for escape. That way led back to the maintenance closet and the cells beyond. The other to dorms and labs and a convoluted path to Gods knew where.

He chose the second option and darted through the door and down the hall. Gladio, or _not_ Gladio, followed, the soles of his boots slapping heavily against the concrete floor. Prompto was fast, but Gladio had the advantage of longer legs and shoes.

“No, not that way,” Ardyn called out through the public address system.

 _Fuck_.

There was no hope of outrunning either Gladio or Ardyn in the state he was in. No hope of escape on his own, but he'd rather die trying than find himself cowering at the Chancellor's feet again. He should have known better. There was no way Gladio or any of the others could be here yet.

If they were coming at all.

“Prompto! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Gladio's voice was too close. Right behind him. Prompto poured on the speed and rounded a corner into another long, poorly lit corridor.

For some reason, he hesitated. Something was down there. He couldn't see it, but some sixth sense brought him to a dead stop and he looked into the darkness for any sign of what it might be. In the deeper shadows, something like wisps of smoke undulated like a brewing storm.

“Are you sure you want to go that way?” Ardyn teased. “It's so dark and scary...”

“Shut up,” Prompto hissed through gritted teeth. “Just shut up.”

Ardyn's laughter bounced through the hallway. Gods, Prompto was going to hear that in his nightmares for the rest of his life.

“Why don't we play a game?” Ardyn said. “I've heard you enjoy games, so this should be quite an... intense, interactive experience for you. Quite hands on, I'd say.”

Prompto shook his head and debated what to do next. Where was fake Gladio?

A low, rumbling sound came from the hall ahead of him, like the low, guttural rumble of an Iron Giant on the prowl. The space was too low and narrow to accommodate a daemon that size, but that didn't mean there wasn't something worse waiting for him at the end of the corridor.

_Make a decision, you idiot._

“Here are the rules:” Ardyn said. “If you can manage to find your way out, I'll let you go free. If I find you first, you're mine to do with as I please.... at least until your friends arrive.”

He said that like it was a given they'd come for him. Like he already knew they were on their way to rescue him. All the hope Prompto buried in the hours spent here came swelling up to the surface. His friends were on the way. They were coming. All he had to do was survive the next day or two.

That seemed like such a long time, and his resources were sorely depleted.

_You've come this far. Don't give up, yet._

It was Noctis' voice in his head, not his own. Noctis telling him to keep going. He could do this for Noct. He'd do anything for him, anything he asked.

“Alright Noct-Gar,” Prompto murmured. “Which way, buddy?”

Safe but likely to lead him back to the dungeons? Or take a risk and face whatever waited for him in the other direction?

“Your code-print will open any door in the Keep,” Ardyn said. He chuckled, the sound a vibrating bass note over the speakers. “Aren't you a lucky boy.”

“Fuck you, dude," Prompto spat.

“Now, now,” Ardyn said. “No need for such vulgarity.”

Prompto's chest tightened. If he was being watched and monitored, and Ardyn could hear him, what was the point of this game? If he couldn't possibly win?

Something inhuman cried out in pain, somewhere deep in the distance. Prompto's skin prickled. His heart raced. Its agony echoed in the fissures and cracks in his own aching, brutalized body. Whatever it was, it sounded pathetic and wounded and broken. Whatever it was, he was sorry for it.

“Shall we begin?” Ardyn asked.

Prompto closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and decided it was worth the risk, even if the whole thing was just another trick.

It probably was. He doubted freedom awaited him if he could find his way outside, but he had to try. Better to take a chance on a long-shot than give up. Wasting time running in circles was better than whatever fucked-up things Ardyn had planned once they were reunited.

And Prompto doubted he'd seen the last of Ardyn.  This was too easy to be anything but a con.  Ardyn even said outright what it was. A game.  

He steeled himself, drew upon the same well of strength that carried him through his assault on the Magitek labs, and he lifted his face, mouth twisted in defiance, to the camera mounted on the wall across from him.

“I'll see you outside,” he said. “With fucking bells on.”

* * *

 

Hunters gathered around Cindy and Prompto, beneath the tow truck's spotlight, safe from the shadows and the reach of daemons. Half of them leered at Cindy, the other half congratulated and thanked Prompto for his help. He basked in that, warmed by the sense that he was somehow useful and not a liability.

One or two broke off to help the wounded hunter, who screamed and moaned in pain on the ground. Prompto looked away from the puddle of blood beneath the man and away from the lifeless arm two feet away from his body.

They could try to save him, but Prompto understood it was probably too late.

He accepted their subdued praise and their pats on the back, all the while, watching the shadows for any sign of Ardyn. If he was ever there at all.

The back of his head throbbed where it collided with the windshield, and his stomach boiled with acid, but he pasted on his brightest smile and pretended he was fine, even as he felt Cindy's concerned gaze on him from halfway across the lot.

“So what happened?” he asked the guy who seemed to be in charge. His name was Paul. “Cor said you guys had the generator up and running.”

“Goddamned Imps cut the line,” Paul said. “They ain't much to fight, but damned if they don't like to cause trouble. We was in the process of gettin' the fence up when they showed up and brought their friend.”

Prompto scanned the dark horizon. Not too far off in the distance, beyond the spill of light from the remaining functional spotlight at the back of the shop, he saw evidence they were about to make another pass at it. He knew from experience Imps were trouble, especially in packs, and they liked to steal whatever they could get their hands on.

“What will it take to get the generator up again?” Prompto asked, not willing to spend the next few days fighting off whatever nasties lurked outside the safety of the light. “Can it be fixed?”

“Sure,” Paul said. “It can be fixed. 'Specially now that Miss Cindy's here.”

“You got a plan?”

Paul grinned and flexed his tattooed forearms. Prompto was reminded of Dave. This guy was cockier, but they could be brothers as far as Prompto was concerned. They had the same coloring and stature, the same taste in tattoos.

“I'm glad you asked, son,” Paul said. “Seein' as you're a pretty good shot and you got some fancy weapons, I don't suppose you'd be opposed to giving us a hand?”

“That's what I'm here for,” Prompto said, happy to be useful. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”

That involved climbing the mill hopper out back, and Gods, he still hated heights. The ledge he found himself on was secure, and the structure stable. It wasn't even that high, but if he so much as looked down, his head started to spin. That didn't bode well for the job he was tasked with.

_Get a grip. Focus. It's not a moving train._

For more than three hours, Prompto crouched on the ledge, his rifle at the ready, and picked off Imps that dared get too close. Below, Cindy had something torn apart, the pieces spread out across the concrete like bits of broken glass. The ash continued to fall all around them and the stale air smelled of sulfur and wood smoke

He closed his eyes for a second and images of Gladio's face in the aftermath of a gunshot surfaced in flashes, all in time to the steady throb in the back of his skull. Then, Gladio's dead stare down in the Keep, his eyes a vomit-inducing gold around the iris and his hair a sickening magenta.

Behind closed eyelids, he ran down claustrophobic corridors that never seemed to end in anything but a cell, through ravaged offices devoid of anything living. His heart in his throat, scarcely daring to breathe, lest something his panicked breaths and his racing heart. Cold skin, damp with sweat, his lungs _burning_.

The buzz of some machine snapped him back into the present. Metal ground against metal and sparks danced all around Cindy, hit the pavement and bounced like tiny balls of lightning until they consumed every last molecule of their source of fuel.

Breathless, Prompto gripped his rifle tighter and waited it out. There was no sense in looking back. Cindy was right. Eyes forward, as Ignis liked to say.

_You're okay._

But he wasn't. It itched and crawled beneath his skin, scratched holes in his lungs. Ate away at the thin fibers holding the tatters of his sanity together. He took out his pocket knife and stabbed the point into the pad of his thumb until a bead of dark blood formed and spilled down the side.

That was better. A tangible wound. Something quantifiable. Something he could see.

Pain that made sense.

He drifted again, this time to Noctis and the way he looked at him just before they parted ways for good. Surrounded by daemons, so many, so goddamned _many_ , he was sure they'd all die. That look stayed with him. Haunted him. Because there was so much promise there, an openness Noctis rarely showed, a softness meant only for him.

 _I'll come back_ , it said. _Wait for me_.

**_….give into me._ **

**_….we all must sacrifice something if this is to end._ **

_“What the fuck, Prompto?”_

Prompto's eyes snapped open, startled back to reality and his head a twisted jumble of too many thoughts to process at once.

A hunter called out to him. Imps. Two hundred yards and closing.

He didn't think. Everything but his instincts shut down, thoughts of Noctis' face as the doors closed on him left behind for the sake of survival in this new, hateful world. He lined up the closest Imp in his sights, aimed, fired, aimed, fired, aimed, fired, until the threat was gone.

It left him cold and feeling empty, nothing on the inside, his body a shell, a vessel for revenge and rage, a void that needed to be filled.

_I'm not okay._

_Goddamn you, Noctis. I hate you._

_Please come back. Please. I need you. I love you. I'm sorry I never told you._

If only Noct was here. Maybe he wouldn't want to rip his own heart out like a disabled MT and watch it explode in a shower of sparks and blood in his hands. 

* * *

When the lights came back on, Prompto climbed down the mill hopper and joined the hunters. Checked in with Cindy. He thought once his feet were back on solid ground, he wouldn't feel like he was about to be swallowed up by the darkness, but he did. He couldn't even manage a sincere smile or offer Cindy the praise she was due.

He avoided the others and stumbled around to the back of the garage, found an unlocked, rusted-out car, and crawled into the back seat. It smelled like dry paper and musk, as if a family of mice had made the vehicle's innards their home. That suited his mood just fine. It was a fitting place to catch some sleep, and he badly needed to rest for a while.

With his feet sticking out the open door, Prompto laid back and closed his eyes. He ignored the spring poking him in the back and the dull roar of conversation of the hunters in the lot beyond the garage.

Try as he might, his mind wouldn't let him sleep. Though exhausted, he needed something more than rest.

Nobody was around. He was totally alone back here.

He turned on his side and undid his pants, slipped a hand into his underwear, and paused.

Footsteps?

No. Just the hum of the generator.

He wrapped a hand around his dick and started to stroke himself, slowly at first, with a vision of Noctis above him, his eyes half-lidded and his lips parted. Coils of pleasure welled up in his belly as he imagined Noctis touching him now, his hands and mouth moving over his skin, fingers sliding down his rib cage to the hollow above his pelvis. No sign of the nervous virgin he'd been in the Keep, this fantasy Noctis knew exactly what to do and where to kiss and how to tease.

Yes, this was good. But it hurt. It might never happen. They might never get a chance to know each other so well. They'd both missed the chance for that. All those years of pining and never doing anything about it, their affection obvious to everyone but themselves.

So much time wasted, and for what?

It hurt way down deep to think about Noctis and the memory he did have wasn't enough.

Too desperate for release to stop, Prompto's thoughts turned to other, darker things, things he never asked for and never wanted, pain and pleasure too tightly interwoven to distinguish between the two. He stroked harder, faster, his hand chafing delicate skin, didn't care if he bled -

_**….give in to me.** _

And he came to an image of a hand locked hard around his wrists and the memory of deep, punishing thrusts that felt too fucking _good_ to fight.

That was his sacrifice. What he gave up to get his King where he belonged.

In the aftermath, he lay still, only vaguely aware of the broken spring digging into his hip, and hated himself for getting off on something he'd hated so much.

And how he'd hated it.

But he hated himself more for giving in.

* * *

 

He woke in the back seat to the shrill ring of his phone. Blindly, he fumbled for it, having lost it somewhere on the floorboard of the car, located it, and answered without looking to see who it was.

“Are you alright?”

 _Ignis_.

“Sleepin',” he muttered and wrenched himself into a sitting position. His pants were still undone. His belt buckle stuck to his skin and left a dent and a welt on his stomach. “What's up?”

“Iris told me what happened between you and Gladio,” Ignis said. “Forgive me for prying, but... you left rather suddenly.”

Prompto heaved a sigh, sat all the way up, and scooted to the open door until his feet met concrete. He tucked his flaccid dick back into his underwear and leaned his head into the door frame.

More of the same. Their worry. Their constant pushing. Gods, if the memories didn't make him insane, their incessant concern would.

“I'm fine, Iggy,” he said irritably, then forced a change of tone. “I'm good. We made it here okay. Hit a few snags, but we made it.”

Ignis was quiet on the other end. Prompto almost hung up.

“I am sorry for the way he spoke to you,” Ignis said. “Iris tells me he was rather harsh.”

“Stop apologizing for him,” Prompto said. “He's a big boy. If he wants to apologize, he will. If not, whatever.”

“Perhaps you have an apology to make of your own?”

_“Say that to me again, and next time I won't miss.”_

“Yeah, probably,” Prompto agreed. “Yeah. I do. It just... I really need you guys to back off, okay? Both of you. It's not helping me to be constantly reminded of how fucked up I am.”

He rubbed his eyes and switched the phone to his other ear as a pair of guys stole into the alley like a pair of thieves.

“We're only trying to help,” Ignis said. “We don't know what you need because you're not telling us.”

“What I need? I need you to _stop_ asking if I'm okay, because I'm not. I'm fucking not, okay?” he said. “I don't want to talk about it, I want to let it go, and I can't do that if the both of you are always on my case.”

He recognized how close to hysteria he sounded. He took a deep, slow breath and closed his eyes. Ignis wasn't the enemy. Gladio wasn't the enemy, no matter how hard his brain tried to make it so.

“I understand,” Ignis said quietly. “But clearly we're not wrong to be worried.”

“I know, and... I really appreciate that, Iggy,” he said. “I really do. So much. But.. _please_... just give me some room to breathe, okay buddy? That's all I'm asking.”

Ignis went silent again. The men in the alley weren't thieves. They were there for other reasons, and Prompto watched with a bit of growing lust as they made out against the back wall of the shop.

“Alright,” Ignis said. “But promise me one thing. When you're ready, you'll speak to Gladio.”

“Why?”

“He's not as unsympathetic to your plight as he seems,” Ignis said. “Rather, he's bothered by... memories best left forgotten.”

_“You think no one's ever gotten the jump on me before?”_

Prompto's brain slid sideways and he fixed his eyes on the men too lost in their passion to notice they were being watched. Jerking off had done nothing to purge him of his inexplicable wants. He dug his nails into the lump on the back of his head until he couldn't bear it anymore, just to keep himself from swirling that drain. _Again_.

It was a good distraction. Pain. Pleasure. What was the difference?

“Prompto?”

“Just... hit my head earlier,” he said. “Little foggy.”

“You should take care of that,” Ignis said. "Or have it looked at."

“Yeah. I will. I just forgot with all the stuff going on,” he said. “The Imps are being dicks and messing stuff up.”

“As per usual, then,” Ignis said.

“Yepper,” Prompto said. He was going to have to do a better job of faking okay. “Listen, Iggy, thanks for calling. I really appreciate it, and I'm gonna be okay. Eventually. No way out but forward, right?”

“Right you are,” Ignis said. “Please consider what I said, alright?”

“Will do, buddy,” he said. “And... tell Gladio I'm sorry. You know. For the almost shooting him thing.”

“Tell him yourself. I've no doubt he'd appreciate it more if it came from you.”

Maybe so, but Prompto couldn't make himself call. He'd taken enough abuse and couldn't handle much more without breaking.

The sounds the men were making got to him. Those low moans infected him, made him want to join them or at least be one of them. His own hand was the least satisfying alternative, but he used it again anyway, sickened by his voyeurism and by the way his body demanded things his mind outright rejected. How could he be so repulsed by a friend's well-meaning and caring touch, yet be so turned on by the idea of a stranger's hands on him?

He came a second time and collapsed onto the seat in front of him, disgusted with himself for not being able to control it. He'd made it all the way through puberty and beyond without _needing_ it like this. There was a huge difference between jerking off for fun and release and this urgent, demanding ache that still wasn't satisfied by climax. It didn't even feel good.

It wasn't long before he was alone again. He needed to sleep, but the throbbing in his head started up afresh and the skin around the lump burned like fire. He was nauseous. Needed to eat, but he was too worn down to get up and take care of either problem.

He wiggled back into his pants and zipped his fly and settled down to sleep again.

He dreamed of drowning.

Of Ardyn's cruel laugh.

Empty corridors.

And of Noctis' pale blue eyes and their silent, heartbreaking goodbye as a set of doors separated them for good.

 


	7. The Soul of a Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Going through a rough patch. Working through it. 
> 
> Anyhoo, thank you guys so much for reading. You don't know how much that means to me. If there was anyone who commented that I didn't respond to, it was an oversight on my part, and I'm sorry for that. I seriously appreciate every single comment you guys leave, as well as those of you who don't. 
> 
> Again, thank you.

_**Before...** _

Prompto darted down the less promising path, toward the low rumbling of daemons, his bare feet numb against the metal floor. He clutched the lab coat tighter around his middle and focused on finding a means of escape. Freedom might be a false promise, but he couldn't afford to give up. It was not in his nature to let forces and obstacles greater than himself dictate his outlook. So long as he had hope and breath in his lungs, he would keep fighting or die trying.

“You're going to regret that,” Ardyn teased. “But don't say I didn't warn you.”

“Fuck off,” Prompto said under his breath.

The lights flickered, sputtered, and the corridor was plunged into a blackness so deep, it almost seemed to have weight to it. Prompto slowed and crept forward, trailing one hand along the wall, the other outstretched to prevent a collision with the supply crates stacked precariously in his path.

“Of course you wouldn't play fair,” he said to himself. “Why would you?”

Ardyn answered with a laugh.

“Life itself is unfair, dear boy,” Ardyn said in a tone that betrayed his laughter. “Do you think either of us would be here if it were?”

Prompto ignored the question, exhaled through his mouth and pressed forward, one cautious step at a time. Ahead of him, something screamed.

He pressed his lips together to hold back a whimper. Beneath his half-frozen bare feet, the floor vibrated. He wanted to run, to turn around and go back to the safety of the lights behind him, but to do that would be to prove himself a coward.

That he would not do.

Something brushed against his shoulder, the light touch of fingertips against the skin of his back, and Prompto's heart almost failed. He darted forward, his jaw locked tight ahead of a scream, and crashed into something he couldn't see in the dark. His forehead smacked against metal with a clang and his face lit up with pain, tasted blood, thick and salty as his nose began a free bleed upon impact.

Dazed and half choking on the warm, thick blood running down the back of his throat, Prompto pushed away from the crates, or the wall, or whatever he'd collided with. Whatever touched him before brushed against the hair at the nape of his neck. He could have imagined daemons or ghosts or some other terrible beastie from the games he loved so much, but all he could picture was Ardyn standing in the darkness behind him, reaching out to touch, uninvited.

Maybe it was. Maybe not. Maybe it only an echo of things before, of Ardyn's hands on his body, touching -

Fuck.

 _Stop_.

Focus.

Prompto took a slow, shuddering breath and continued forward, wiped blood from his upper lip with the sleeve of the lab coat and shut off everything but the instinct to survive.

Up ahead, the familiar and dreaded purple glow of something daemonic coiled up from the floor, at once spider-like but also serpentine.

Prompto froze.

Keep going, or turn back?

Ardyn's soft laugh crackled through the speakers and Prompto balled his hands into fists. The asshole was taunting him. That should have come as no surprise, but it filled Prompto with the kind of rage he probably should have felt all along and hadn't yet managed to summon.

He was pissed.

So. Very. Pissed.

And he couldn't do anything about it.

The daemon before him now was nothing he'd seen before. Eight bristly and distinctly arachnid appendages protruded from a snake-like body not unlike Naga, but infinitely more terrifying. Here there was no one to come and save him. No back-up. No Noctis.

It reared up and what Prompto saw in the red-violet glow of miasma made him want to scream and puke at the same time.

Gladio. It had Gladio's face. Gladio's eyes. His scars.

A pair of mandibles in place of his mouth and jaw.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

So much worse.

It skittered toward him wearing Gladio's grin and Prompto stumbled back, away, toward the relative safety behind him until he found himself trapped between the wall and a stack of crates.

“This can't be real,” Prompto whined. “It can't be real.”

“Oh, I assure you, it is,” Ardyn purred. “Your dear friend makes such an interesting daemon, doesn't he?”

“This is just another mindfuck,” Prompto said. “It's not real. It's not real!”

“Who are you trying to convince?”

Gladio-spider-snake lunged forward, a thick, black fluid dripping from its mandibles, a deep, dark cavity where Gladio's teeth should have been. Prompto dodged and his shoulder slammed into something else, probably more goddamned crates, and he closed his eyes and braced for impact.

It didn't come, but the creature was close. He could feel its putrid, foul breath against the side of his face. Could smell it. Like sulfur and rot and death.

Overcome with the urge to sob like his life depended on it, the tatters of Prompto's hope began to unravel. He was an insect, caught in Ardyn's web. The harder he fought, the more entangled he would become.

There was no escape. What a naive idiot he was.

He thought of how amazing Ignis' spicy skewers tasted, and of how nice it was to fall asleep surrounded by friends, of all those stupid puns, and of Iris' way of flicking his forehead when he said something idiotic. He thought of chocobos and how he sort of liked how bad they smelled. He thought of everything good that came before all this, the prospect of adventure, of getting to see the world in the company of friends, and of how excited he was to finally meet Luna in person.

All that was gone, gone, gone.

The daemon snarled and Prompto forced himself to stop thinking. He had to move. One direction or the other. And he had to do it now.

He was strong for his size, but no match for something like this. Not on his own.

If he wasn't strong, then he would have to be fast.

He couldn't go back.

The only way out was through it.

 

* * *

 

 

Prompto didn't let himself have an idle moment. He stayed busy, for fear he'd find himself behind the garage in some compromising position with someone he wouldn't normally look at twice. Between assisting the hunters with the construction of the fence around Hammerhead and climbing various structures to provide cover fire while they worked, there was no time to get himself into trouble.

There was only work and sleep.

Sometimes, he ended his day too tired to dream. He considered that a good thing. A small victory among a series of serious fuck-ups he couldn't stop committing.

But he felt like shit. He looked like shit. Stopped bothering to do anything with his hair. Showered only when he couldn't stand himself anymore. Hardly ate, and when he did, he never finished his meal.

If anyone noticed or cared, they didn't mention it to his face.

He slept in the backseat of the abandoned car most nights, curled up in a sleeping bag with the exposed coil in the ripped upholstery digging into his thigh. It left bruises and occasionally shallow punctures in his skin, but it also reminded him that he was not in the Keep anymore. That was good, too.

Alcohol helped on the nights he couldn't sleep. Around here, it was plentiful and cheap. Half the time, he didn't even pay for it. It was offered, and he accepted.

It was always a vile brew made out of yeast, sugar, and whatever the hunters could get their hands on. Some batches were better than others, depending what went into them, but they were all strong enough to put Prompto on his ass.

So he drank. And he worked. And he tried not to think about Ardyn.

Or Noctis.

All the while, hunger slithered through his veins, a serpentine beast that grew larger and hungrier by the day. Just a dull, gnawing ache at first. An annoyance, until it wasn't.

He did his best to contain it.

He did his best.

As usual, his best wasn't good enough.

Far too soon after his last encounter, after he swore to himself never again, he found himself inside the storage shed behind the diner, his pants and underwear in a pile on the floor, his boots lost to the shadows. Strange hands on his body. Strange lips on his skin.

He didn't care. Didn't care. Whatever happened, happened.

Beyond drunk, with his back pressed to a shelf, the metal cutting into his skin, he let a 40-ish hunter from Ravatogh fuck him while the others gathered inside the diner for rations. He didn't even know the guy's name, and he didn't care to.

His legs were hooked over the man's forearms, his sock-clad feet nowhere near the ground, completely at the nameless hunter's mercy. Not ideal. Not how he wanted this to go. He was too drunk to hold onto that imaginary sense of control he had when he was less wasted. He was not in charge here, and he didn't like it, but he didn't care enough to say stop.

Fuck it. Let him do what he liked. It wasn't like it mattered. It would never matter what happened to poor little Prompto because _that_ Prompto was dead.

The hunter's face was too close. Prompto didn't want to see it. He didn't care to know what the guy looked like, any more than he needed to know the man's name.

Somewhere between the first knowing glance across the parking lot and the man's careless entry, Prompto slipped outside of himself, only half there, only half aware of all the ways he was hurting himself. This was punishment for being weak. Punishment for giving in. For wanting it.

Didn't matter.

If he opened his eyes, it would be Ardyn anyway. Even if it wasn't.

Prompto was peripherally aware of the man's mouth on his, of a wet and invasive tongue darting past his lips and he recoiled, then relaxed. No point in fighting it. Better to -

**_...give in_ **

and go with it.

For a while, he didn't think, only felt. He gave into the building pressure in his groin and focused on the ripple of pleasure that washed through him each time the man's dick thrust against his prostate. It felt good not to think. It felt good to let go. To pretend it was -

Not Noctis. That hurt too much. That was the hunter's hooch poured into an open wound. Open flame against a mark he could never remove.

His hands dug into the man's ass cheeks, urging him deeper, deeper - _take everything from me, all of it, everything I have to give -_ until the hunter came inside him with a guttural growl and bit down hard on Prompto's shoulder.

And then, without a word, the man left him in the shed, stranded on some distant shore, in the dark, half-conscious, unsatisfied, and alone.

It was better that way.

It was what he deserved.

He found his pants but instead of getting dressed, he balled them up into a wad and clutched the fabric to his chest, hugged it tight, and wished for all the world that he was dead.

Dead had to be better than this.

* * *

 

  
It was Cindy who found him there on the concrete floor, only half conscious, wearing nothing but his socks and shirt. How long he'd been there, Prompto couldn't say. Long enough for the grit on the floor to leave dimples and divots his hip and thigh. Long enough for a puddle of drool to form on the concrete below his cheek.

He hid his face when he realized it was her. Tried not to bawl. Shame didn't cover it. Humiliation, either. This was not something she was supposed to see. Not her. Anyone but her.

“What are you doin' to yerself, sweetie?” she murmured.

A gentle hand swept over this dirty hair.

“C'mon,” she said and eased him into a sitting position. “Let's get you outta here.”

Prompto closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them again, he was on a cot in Cindy's office hugging a waste basket that reeked of vomit. His cheeks were wet. His eyes burned.

“I'm gonna give Ignis a call,” she said. “I know he can't come get ya, but -”

“Don't,” Prompto croaked. “Please.”

“Sweetie, you ain't okay, and I'm worried about you,” she said.

“I'm fine. Just had too much to drink,” he said. “Maybe I did something stupid because of it, but I'm okay.”

He wasn't, but he couldn't ask for anyone's help.  

Cindy knelt in front of him. Those lovely green eyes were filled with worry. Prompto had to look away.

“When I told you to get drunk and cry, I didn't mean like this,” she said. “You get that, right? I didn't mean for you to go on a bender or nothin'.”

Prompto forced a laugh that was almost convincing, if not for the raw, scraped-out edge to it. It was either laugh or cry, and he sure as hell wasn't going to cry.

“It's no big deal,” Prompto said. “I'm good.”

“You ain't,” she said. “I see what you been doin' to yerself. I ain't said nothin' 'cause I thought maybe you was just sewin' some oats as Paw-Paw likes to say, but this ain't you.”

Prompto turned his face to the wall.

“You don't even know me,” he said.

“I know enough,” she said gently. “And I ain't gonna pry or ask a bunch of questions, but I also ain't gonna let you go down this road you're walkin' without at least tryin' to help you straighten out.”

Prompto sighed. He wanted to be angry. If it had been Ignis or Gladio or even Iris talking to him like this, he would have been pissed.

He was too tired and nauseous to be pissed.

“You get some sleep,” she said and patted his hand. “You need anything, you let me know.”

What he needed, she would never be able to give him.

 

* * *

 

   
Three days later, Prompto was on his way to Meldacio with Cindy and a crew of hunters. Cor's orders. He suspected Cindy called someone against his wishes, but if she had, none of them showed or even called to check in.

He couldn't help but be bitter about that as he sat in the cab of the transport truck, behind the driver and thumbed through the contents of his phone for want of anything better to do. None of his games worked anymore. The music app did only half the time, but he didn't want to listen to songs that reminded him of anything, good or bad.

His thumb hovered over the photo gallery, but he couldn't make himself open it. He knew what was in there. Pictures of a smiling Noct. Ignis, before he lost his eyesight, no scars, no bleached-out, milky irises, no cane. Gladio, shirtless as always. He couldn't make himself look.

Instead, he opened his call log.

The last three calls were from Cor. Before that, Ignis.

They were giving him the space he asked for, and he resented it. He could have died, been eaten alive by a daemon, and nobody would have known. Maybe Cindy would have called them or something, but it stung to know neither of them bothered to stay in touch.

Even if he wanted to be left alone, a call every now and then might have been nice.

_You could always call them, you know._

But why? In any other circumstances, if Noctis had never been in his orbit, Prompto would not have been friends with either of them. As it was, Prompto sensed early on that neither approved of their friendship. Ignis warmed to him after a while and maybe even liked him, but Gladio took a lot longer, and Prompto never got the impression Gladio was particularly fond of him.

Without Noct in the picture, it was hard to imagine remaining friends with them.

_That's Ardyn talking, you asshole._

But was it?

He thought about calling Ignis as he stared out the window.

What would he say?

There was nothing to say. They had nothing in common except Noct. Noct was gone. Only the Gods knew when he was coming back.

He almost called anyway, to beg for help and forgiveness, for a kind word or even an insult, but instead, he pocketed the phone and spent the next four hours counting the daemons alongside the road and wondering if this would really be his life from now on.

 

* * *

 

 

Another week saw him on his way back to Lestallum to pick up a supply of power shards from Holly. Cindy was at the wheel of the tow truck, humming along with some song Prompto had never heard. Every now and then, he caught her worried glances at him, but he pretended not to see.

It bothered him, though. He shouldn't care, but Cindy was... special somehow. Off limits, out of his league, and one of the few things left untouched by Ardyn's hate. His pathetic crush seemed so stupid now. So stupidly innocent and out of touch.

Maybe he hated her a little for that, too. For being so fucking kind and so beautiful it blinded him.

Maybe he hated everyone. That was the only thing Ardyn gave him. The ability to despise everything and everyone around him. Himself most of all.

When they reached Lestallum, Prompto didn't seek out Ignis or Gladio. He left Cindy at the Levelle and took off for the nearest bar, numb and full of self loathing. He promised himself as he ordered his first drink that he was just there for the alcohol and that was it. He would let the music and noise drown out the static inside his skull until he was drunk enough to go to bed.

He swore to himself he would go to bed alone.

And what a lie that turned out to be.

 

* * *

 

  
After, he wandered the streets, not wasted but drunk enough to be clumsy, with the heady afterglow of release burning through his veins, and too numb to feel the inevitable crush of shame. That would come later, but for now, he was half a zombie, shambling down the cobblestone streets like a mindless idiot.

When he came upon the power plant, he stopped and gripped the fencing to peer down at the shimmering blue of the meteor's energy. A low humming vibration pulsed against the soles of his boots. This was the epicenter of this new world.

That was miraculous and terrifying at the same time. So terrifying, he slid to the ground and leaned against the wall behind him, unsure of why it bothered him so much and too drunk to figure it out.

He should go find Ignis, or maybe Iris or Cor but he stayed where he was. Beneath his clothes, he could still feel the stranger's hands on his skin. He could still smell the stink of garbage from the dumpster beside them, mingled with the spices from the nearby market.

“Prompto?”

His eyes snapped open. He knew that voice. He knew it well.

_….next time I won't miss._

From where he sat, Gladio looked like some terrible and mythical giant, Titan in human form, massive and towering over him.

“...hey,” Prompto managed.

“The hell you doing out here?”

“Can't sleep.”

In his hand, Gladio held a paper bag. He took a step closer and held it up.

His hair was growing out on the sides. His stubble was an inch or so longer.

He looked tired.

“Have a beer with me?”

Prompto didn't need another drink, but he saw no reason to stop drinking either.

“Sure.”

Gladio dropped to the ground next to him, a respectable distance away and passed a bottle of beer into Prompto's waiting hand. It was still cold, but beads of sweat formed on the glass. Prompto thought of rain and tears.

“I miss the goddamned sun,” Gladio muttered. “I dream about it sometimes. Nice and warm, you know?”

“Yeah,” Prompto agreed. He'd had a few dreams like that of his own. They were nice, until daemons appeared and swallowed up all the light. “Guess we took it for granted.”

Gladio twisted the cap off his beer and stared at the neck of the bottle with undue interest.

“I'm sorry,” he finally said. “For what happened a while back.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Silence stretched out between them. Not so long ago, Prompto would have made a joke or a comment on the weather or said something, anything, to break that silence, but he didn't have the energy to try to lighten the mood. Something in him was broken, and he didn't know how to fix it.

“I know what you're going through,” Gladio said after a while. “Happened to me, too.”

Prompto exhaled, _hard_. Like getting kicked in the chest, and he was unable to draw in another breath. Panic started to set in.

Everyone around him saw it. Like it was burned into his skin, written in permanent marker on his forehead. Like a brand. They  knew what it was, they could see his malfunction, smell it, taste it, identify and categorize it.  

But Gladio.  

 _Me too_.  

That did not compute.

“I just thought maybe you should know that,” Gladio said. “We don't gotta talk about it.”

“I can't.”

“I know.”

He didn't. He might understand parts of it, but not all of it. Prompto's mind started to slide sideways and his head filled with the now familiar sizzle and pop of static.

“Took me two years to tell anyone,” Gladio said as he peered into the mouth of the beer bottle. “And only because the bastard tried the same shit with someone I love.”

It was oppressively hot out, but Prompto's skin prickled with chill. In spite of himself, he looked at Gladio.

“Not Noct...”

Gladio shook his head. He looked up from the bottle, his face full of something Prompto had never seen there before. That look echoed deep in his bones and rebounded like thunder in what was left of his soul.

“Not Noct."

His next thought was unbearable.  

"...Iris?"

Gladio's lips pressed into a thin line.

“Iggy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thinking of maybe telling Gladio's side of this as a one-shot. I have it written, but it's all these long blocks of dialogue and I don't like the way it reads. Stay tuned, I guess?


	8. FUBAR

_Before....._

The Gladio-daemon snarled, the low bass notes of its voice resounding in Prompto's bones. Thick, tar-like saliva dripped from its jowls.

_Move, damn you._

Prompto's feet were frozen to the floor. His heart was on the verge of suicidal combustion. There was nothing here he could use to save himself except his own wits, and those had left him.

“Fe, fi, fo, fum,” Ardyn drawled over the speaker. “I smell the fear of a pathetic clone.”

Anger replaced fear. He was more than just a clone. He had to be, right?

He steeled his resolve, took a breath, and moved.

His shoulder slammed into a hairy, slimy leg and his feet slipped in some foul substance on the floor, but he kept going. If he could get past this thing, he could find somewhere to hide, have a silent meltdown, and move on.

It swiped at his calves and the sting of venom lit them on fire, but still he kept going, blindly through the dark corridor, crashing into things, walls, crates, obstacles that seemed put in his path on purpose.

He was aware of his panicked breathing, of his whimpers and half-sobs, and knew he had to keep it under control. Noise would draw them in. Might as well lay down and wait to die.

Loud bangs against the walls and floors behind him compelled Prompto to move faster, faster, faster. His lungs burned, he'd lost his breath, but he could not afford to give up. Not when Noct was on the way. Not when there was the slimmest chance of escape.

Up ahead was another corridor. He could either go left or right. Straight was a dead end full of barrels and debris.

The path to the right was well lit.

Light meant no daemons.

No-brainer.

He skidded around the corner and into the safety of fluorescence, out of breath and sure his heart was going to explode inside his chest.

Prompto didn't slow down. He kept running, his feet too numb to feel the impact of bare skin against corrugated metal. He bypassed doors and open rooms until he found stairs leading down.

Did he want to go down?

He didn't have much of a choice. Down it was.

At the bottom, he found a dorm. Bunk beds, footlockers for storage, bottles of half-finished drinks. The floor was littered with an assortment of things. Boxes of ammo. Lonely socks.

Prompto closed the door behind him and leaned back against it to catch his breath. He could only linger a second, but he was nauseous. The daemon's venom worked its way into his blood.

Horrific screeching noises outside the door, the skittering of claws against the metal at his back had Prompto moving again. He opened footlockers and tossed useful items aside and searched for footwear beneath the beds.

His calves burned like acid had been poured on them. He silenced the concern he might now be infected and dug through drawers and pawed at the bottles on the side tables until he located a partially used antidote.

It helped. A little. The welts stayed behind, his skin remained pinkish, but the burning, sick feeling stopped.

Good enough.

He tugged on too-big cargo pants and two pairs of socks, a t-shirt with the Empire's emblem on it, then stuffed his feet into a pair of boots that fit better than he expected.

The beds were inviting. He wanted to lay down and sleep forever. Just close his eyes and rest. Close them until he woke up from this nightmare.

He couldn't stay.

For what felt like hours, he wandered through maze-like hallways, through offices and labs, hiding from daemons both large and small.  There were MT's, too but as long as he was careful, he could take them out.  

Several ripped out their cores before he even needed to fight.  

Finally, he entered a long hallway.  Nothing dangerous waited for him there. 

Except an open door at the end.

The lights of the city beyond.

It couldn't be this easy, but Prompto had to give it a shot. He bolted toward freedom, toward the cold night, his heart racing. He stood a chance. He could get out.

He tripped on something just as he reached the threshold, went sprawling face first, but he was scrambling to find his feet before the pain of impact registered. He kept going, half crawling, his lungs filling with the scent of cold and snow, the smell of freedom and safety.

It wasn't that easy.

It was  _never_  that easy.

Just as he stepped through the doorway, a hand seized a fist full of his hair and yanked him back into the darkness.

“It's so close, you can almost touch it,” Ardyn purred in his ear. “Yet so far away.”

 

* * *

 

  
Prompto finished his beer in silence, waiting for Gladio to keep talking or go away. His head hurt, full of things he couldn't reconcile. He kept trying to picture big, strong, tough Gladio as a victim and couldn't.

Not Ignis, either. Ignis was the strongest person Prompto had ever met. Even stronger than Gladio in some ways. He might have lost his eyesight, but the way Prompto heard it, he held his own against Ardyn. Maybe even hurt him a little.

If one could actually hurt an immortal.

Prompto sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. Caught a whiff of strange cologne. He wanted it off his skin. He felt unclean. He didn't want to talk or hear about what happened to Gladio. It wouldn't make a difference. It wouldn't make it better.

“I gotta go,” he said and pushed unsteadily to his feet. “See you 'round.”

“Prompto, wait.”

“I'm not gonna talk about it, Gladio.”

“I'm not asking you to,” Gladio said.

“Then what do you want?” Prompto asked.

Gladio eyed him, drank. Prompto braced for a lecture, but the seconds stretched into minutes, and he thought about all the mean things Gladio had said to him over the years. He'd always thought it came from a good place, those unkind digs at his personality and presence. Gladio did it to Noct plenty. Jokes about Noct's small dick and lack of muscles. The lazy Prince who would rather sleep than live.

But Gladio never said those things to Ignis. He'd never spoken an unkind word to him in Prompto's presence.

What did that mean? Was it just a case of Gladio seeing Iggy as an equal and therefore above reproach?

Just brotherly tough love?

Did it mean anything at all?

_He never liked you._

Prompto closed his eyes and tried to see Gladio as he was. Not Ardyn. Not a daemon. Not a borderline abuser who switched between passive-aggressive nastiness and straight-up verbal assault.

 _Gods, you're worthless_.

Gladio's sigh brought him back. He opened his eyes to the orange glow of the street lights, to the distinctly amber hue of Gladio's eyes.

He was just a man. At his core, a good man. Prompto struggled to remember that.

“What do you want from me?” Prompto asked, quieter this time.

“Why don't you come back to our place,” Gladio said. “Iggy'll whip something up and you can grab a shower and sleep it off on the couch.”

The offer was tempting. But he didn't want Gladio to see him in better lighting. He didn't want them to smell the sex and perfume on his skin. Ignis might not be able to see him, but he would know.

“I gotta meet Dave in a while,” Prompto said. “Maybe some other time, big guy.”

“You're making this a lot harder on yourself than it has to be,” Gladio said. “Do we gotta fuck you to make you stick around?”

Prompto gave a brittle laugh and finished the rest of the beer. That was more tempting that it should have been, joke or not.

“As if,” Prompto said. “G'night, Gladio.”

Prompto walked away without looking back.

It felt so final, like the severing of bonds. A goodbye.

And maybe, that was what he needed.

* * *

 

  
Time flew when there was no daylight to mark its passing. Prompto lived in a perpetual state of misery, unable to stop himself from letting others do as they pleased with his body. No matter where he went, there was always someone willing to fuck the grief out of him.

All it took for Prompto to want it was for someone to show an interest. Flirt a little. Smile. Pour booze down his throat so he wouldn't feel it.

In the moment, it shut down the voices in his head, drowned out the memory of how good it felt to be with Noctis, and how vile and terrifying it had been with Ardyn. In the moment, he was nothing but a raw nerve, pure sensation, mindless and stupid with the desire to matter.

In the moment, he mattered to someone. Even if it was only for their own gratification. He mattered.

After, once the heat faded and he returned to himself, he was left empty and lost. Full of guilt and shame for craving it so badly. For inviting others to use him. For needing them to.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find catharsis or redemption or comfort in the bodies of strangers. It didn't go away. The desperation always came back.

That unsatisfied and nameless beast in his chest was always hungry.

 _Feed me_ , it demanded.  _More, more, give me more._

He did it over and over and over again in hopes of taming it, satisfying it, hoping it would be a salve for the rot inside his soul. He hated himself for it, but he couldn't  _stop_. It made what Ardyn did seem less horrific and more like something he'd wanted from the start.

Prompto knew that was bullshit. He never asked for it. But maybe he didn't fight hard enough.

* * *

 

Refugees were poring in from the south in droves. If Prompto was in Hammerhead, he was always on the crew that escorted them to safety.

They arrived in boats. The wealthy first, in sleek sea-worthy vessels with comfortable amenities and plenty of food and supplies. Then came the middle class, in smaller boats, packed to the gills with souls displaced by darkness.

By the time the poor arrived, there were few. Their lack of resources meant most didn't get out alive.

Prompto noticed the dwindling number of children among the new arrivals. He didn't want to imagine what that meant.

One of the last large groups to arrive came by fishing boat, bound for Galdin, a distress call. The boat was taking on water. Thirty-seven souls on board.

Every passenger was from Ueltham, many from Gralea.

 _Nifs_.

Among the hunters were grumblings. Let them drown, they said. They were the enemy. Who cared if they didn't make it?

Prompto disagreed. They were people trying to survive, just like everyone else.

There was tension in the truck on the way, a heady silence that bled into Prompto's bones. He closed his eyes and wondered what they would think of him if they knew what he was or where he came from. He had a feeling they would not be as accepting as Noctis. They would not open their arms and call him a crown citizen.

The beach was swarming with daemons when they arrived. Prompto switched gears, from quiet brooding to destructo mode in a jiffy, and he hung back and took pot-shots at the weaker daemons as the hunters cut a path through them to the dock.

It took almost an hour to reach the stranded boat, which listed to one side, sinking in the choppy surf 100 meters off the dock. It took another two to safely retrieve the passengers, six at a time in a battered dinghy. Prompto stayed behind on the dock, in the safety of the spotlight, his rifle at the ready to take out anything that got too close.

He tried to stay on task, but their dirty, pale faces caught his attention and held it. These were the poorest of the poor, people who gave up whatever of value they owned to make the crossing.

Most didn't have more than a single bag with them. Some had nothing at all.

One girl in particular drew his eye.

She was young, maybe younger than he was. Freckled.  Apricot colored hair. A garment that looked like she'd sewed it from a potato sack. There was a toddler on her hip and her stomach swelled beneath the rough fabric of her dress, hugely pregnant, ready to pop. Her arms were stick thin and her face was hollow.

One of the other refugees leered at her, his grin predatory and condescending.

It reminded Prompto of Ardyn.

“What a little whore ye are,” the man said. “Open up those legs and spread the wealth. I got coin.”

The girl clutched the toddler closer and lifted her chin. She refused to look at the man.

“I'm talkin' to ye.”

“Hey!” Prompto called out and left his post to help her out. He pushed past her harasser and threw an arm around her shoulders like they were old friends. “It's so great to see you! I was starting to worry you wouldn't make it.”

The girl blinked at him in confusion, but caught on a second later when he flicked his eyes at the man. Her smile was tired but grateful.

“Wasn't so sure I'd make it meself,” she said in a thick accent. “Awful time getting' out 'o Altissia, it was. Right bunch 'o thieves, this lot. Took me for everything I 'ad.”

“All that matters is that you're safe,” Prompto said. He held out his arms to take the baby. “Lemmie see my nephew. Hey there, little guy!  You're getting so big!”

She handed the toddler over reluctantly, but mouthed thank you when the harasser wasn't looking. Prompto offered his friendliest grin.

“No sweat,” he said as he moved to walk beside her. “How's it looking on the other side of the pond?”

“It's hell on earth,” she said seriously. She dropped the accent to closer to Tenebrae than Gralea. “Not many left uninfected.”

He slowed to let the harasser move on ahead. The toddler lay his head against Prompto's shoulder. A sticky hand curled around his neck. Something fluttered in his stomach, but not a bad thing this time. The boy smelled like something warm and welcoming.

“Heya, sorry if I came on a little strong,” he said. “That guy was being a real dick.”

“I appreciate your assistance,” she said.

“Hey, what kind of gentleman would I be if I didn't help out a damsel in distress?” he said lightly. For a second, he almost felt like himself again. “So, um, what's your name?”

“Hecate,” she said.

“Oooh, mysterious. I likes.”

“You're very kind,” she said. “I've always hated it. Sounds like something you'd call a witch in a children's story.”

“Nah, it's a great name,” he said. “And what about this little guy?”

“Noah,” she said. “Are you going to tell me your name or should I guess?”

“Prompto,” he said.

Up ahead, shouts rose up and Prompto went on alert. He handed Noah back to his mother and unholstered his gun.

“I, uh, gotta go,” he said. “But I'll find you when we get to the trucks, okay? I'll ride with you.”

“That's not necessary.”

“Yeah, it kinda is,” he said. “Not sure I trust this bunch around a pretty girl. If you know what I mean.”

“Can I trust you?”

“Crownsguard's honor,” he said with a smile. “Don't worry. I got your back.”

Prompto was bone tired by the time they reached the trucks, but he left behind a trail of dissolving daemons in his wake. He accepted the hunter's praise, humbled and proud of himself for not falling down, getting knocked out, or running away.

Here, no one looked out for Prompto the way his friends had. No one babied him. They relied on him to do his part, and that was a step closer to standing on his own two feet.

Cor, at least, would be proud.

In the spotlights, they were out of danger, but the harasser had found his way back to Hecate. He had her boxed in against the side of the truck, one hand on either side of her shoulders and she cowered beneath his leer. In the bright light, her hair was fire and gold.

“It ain't like I can get ye pregnant,” the man said and smoothed a hand over her belly. "Jest lie back and enjoy it.”

Prompto shoved the man away from her. For a second, he saw Ardyn standing before him, impossibly tall and brimming with evil intent. He wanted to strangle him with his own scarf.

“Mind your own business, boy.”

Prompto cocked his gun and aimed at the man's face. The barrel was only inches away. If he pulled the trigger, there would be nothing left of his head.

That thought was sickeningly appealing.

The man held up his hands and backed up a few paces.

“Come near her again and I will end you, dude,” Prompto said.

His hands dropped to his sides, took two more steps backward, then turned for the other truck.

“You okay?” Prompto asked Hecate.

“He's been bothering me since Altissia,” she said. “Seems to have mistaken me for a whore.”

“Why?”

“I suppose it's because I'm twenty and have a young child and another on the way,” she said.

“Wow. That is kinda young,” Prompto said. “Not that I'm judging or anything. It's just, you know, young where I'm from. Most people wait until they're like, thirty.”

She held her son closer. Pressed her lips to the child's temple.

“My husband... disappeared,” she said. “I suppose he's a daemon now...”

Prompto's heart went out to her. That had to be rough.

“I'm sorry,” Prompto said. Maybe he had judged the situation differently. Just a little. “When are you due?”

“A few more weeks,” she said. She sighed and shifted the baby on her hip. “To be honest, I've lost track. Could be tomorrow for all I know.”

Paul called for everyone to get in the trucks. Prompto took Noah from Hecate and helped her into the cab, then climbed in behind her. One hunter Prompto didn't know protested his decision.

“She's pregnant, dude. Have a heart.”

“I can ride in the back,” Hecate said. “It's no trouble.”

“Nope,” Prompto said. “Not on my watch.”

It felt good to protect someone for a change.

Instead of being the one in need of protection.

 

* * *

 

 

The others were transported to Lestallum, but Hecate stayed on at Hammerhead. Pearl, a 50-ish hunter and resident medic didn't think it was safe for her to make the journey to Lestallum being so close to her due date.

Cindy took a liking to Hecate, and then all but adopted her when she proved she knew her way around electronics. Prompto was relieved. Not only would he have a couple of friends around to keep him honest, he knew Hecate would be more or less safe on Cindy's watch.

Prompto was there for the birth of Hecate's daughter, Artemis. He held her hand and talked her through it, glad to have a distraction from the nagging, chronic desire to destroy himself.

“Here you go, mama,” Pearl said as she handed the scrunchy-faced baby off. “A healthy baby girl. She's just as pretty as the sunrise, ain't she?”

The relief in Hecate's face was clear. She never said it, but she worried that something would go wrong. That maybe she would give birth to a daemon instead.

Or maybe that was just Prompto's imagination running away from him.

He wanted to stay at Hammerhead. There were fewer opportunities to fuck up. The population was transient, but the location's set-up made it difficult to do bad. After Cindy found him in the shed, she'd put a lock on it and refused to give up the key, not that Prompto had the guts to ask. That left the abandoned cars out back, but in his absence, others claimed them.

Still, he had an itch.

He couldn't resist scratching. Even if it meant doing it himself.

As much as he wanted to stick around, Cor had him going all over the place, on rescues and escorts, retrieving shards from the meteor, fighting off daemons and coordinating supply exchanges with Meldacio. And Meldacio was a hotbed of deviancy, full of people who lived every day like it was their last. There was no shortage of alcohol or sex, and Prompto overindulged in both.

He left every time covered in bruises and strung out from daemon killing sprees and rough sex. Slowly but surely, he went numb to it. It didn't matter if it felt good or bad. At least he wasn't alone.

 

* * *

 

  
A year went by before he realized it. Then two.

He cut his hair short. Lost weight. Gained it back. He avoided mirrors. Didn't think about Noctis or Ardyn if he could help it. He distanced himself from everything that happened before the sun stopped rising. He stopped feeling anything beyond the vaguest impressions of emotion, but he learned to fake it well.

Sometimes, it was like he was a spectator in his own life, watching himself do things he never would have done before.

On the outside, he seemed like his old self. Happy-go-lucky jokester, down for a game of darts, a stiff drink, and socializing around a campfire.

On the inside, he didn't know himself anymore. He was filled with poison and fire. Nothing could purge it.

He barely spoke to Gladio or Ignis, but Iris called once a month if she didn't see him out in the field.

“I'm hearing things about you, Prompto,” she said. “They're... not very nice.”

“It's just talk, Iris.”

“Are you okay?”

“It's all good, buddy,” he promised, but he didn't really mean it. “I'm doing great.”

“They're saying you'll fuck anything that moves.”

Prompto chuckled into the phone, but he squeezed his eyes shut tight.

“You kiss your brother with that mouth?”

“Eww.”

“Yeah, that came out wrong,” he said.

“Is it true?”

“I have a highly developed sex drive,” he said and took a swig of hunter's hooch that tasted like cherries. A good batch this time. “Can't help it if everybody wants some, dude.”

“Prompto -”

“It's the end of the world,” he said. “Might as well have some fun before I kick the bucket.”

But it wasn't fun. More and more, he felt himself losing control. As if he had much to begin with, but there were times when he wanted to say no and didn't. Times when he said no and it happened anyway. Either because he was too drunk to stop it, or because he was too tired to fight.

Those times were the worst. They brought him too close to everything he was trying to put behind him. It was illogical, backwards, twisted to believe constantly putting himself in that situation would help, but sometimes it did.

It was mostly men, but there was the occasional woman, too. Women were so different from men, it boggled the mind. They were softer, rarely handled him roughly, and if they did, it wasn't in the same sort of way.

He was always guilty after. For some reason, he always thought of Noctis, of how gentle he was, and it hurt all the way through to think of him now.

Was he ever coming back? Did he know the hell he'd left behind? How hard everyone was fighting, just to stay alive?

Prompto cursed him sometimes. For leaving. For not letting Prompto fulfill his promise, ever at his side, like he was supposed to.

Because without Noctis there, the ground beneath Prompto's feet threatened to crumble with each step. Without a real purpose, he was lost.

And no one understood.  _He_  didn't understand.

Sometimes, he invited death. He made reckless choices on the battlefield. Got too close to a daemon, hoping it would be the end of him so he wouldn't have to live in this fucked up world or wake up every day with the weight of shame and darkness suffocating him.

 

* * *

 

 

The air stank now. No matter where he went, he could smell death on the breeze. The world was a cesspool of rotting garbage and festering sores, of bodies, animal carcasses. Three years, and Noctis was still gone. Three years since he'd seen the sun.

Cape Caem was one of the only places left that didn't reek. It still smelled of the ocean, of salt and vegetation. Cor used it as a secondary base for training, but the years had not been so kind. The house was falling apart and it had been overtaken by the stray cats Monica insisted on feeding when she was around.

Prompto didn't mind the cats. It was everything else that bothered him.

Cor especially. Because Cor watched him like a hawk. Orders from Ignis or Gladio or both.

He drank in secret and satisfied himself when he got a moment alone. It wasn't good enough. It was toxic, but he needed a fix like a junkie needed the next hit.

They were the only two there, awaiting Iris' arrival with a fresh batch of recruits. They'd been delayed due to a broken spotlight and a shortage of supplies.

Prompto sat on the porch and watched the dark, cloudy sky. Every now and then, the horizon lit up as a storm built in the distance. He thought he could feel the electricity in his veins.

“Perhaps you should take some time off,” Cor suggested.

“And do what?” Prompto asked.

“Get yourself together. You're falling apart.”

“I'm as together as I'm gonna get.”

Prompto was surly after that. He'd been stuck out here for three days and his compass was spinning again. The dreams came back, of Ardyn holding him down, MT's watching him go to pieces, silent, obedient, metal guard dogs created from his own flesh and blood.

Worse was waking up on the cusp of climax, with no choice but to finish it, with images of his surrender fresh in his mind.

After four nights of bad dreams, Prompto got out of bed, grabbed a fresh bottle of booze and wandered outside to the back fence. He could smell the ocean on the breeze.

He wanted to scream. Open his mouth and let it all come pouring out, let every ounce of heartache and self loathing come flowing up through his throat and past his lips. He wanted to break things and cry and let go of all this pain.

It was a long way down to the sea. He was clumsy. Maybe -

 _No_.

Maybe -

He slid his hand down the front of his pajama pants and grabbed hold of his dick. Gave it a slow, long stroke, the way Noctis touched him in the Keep, and he thought about the moon, about the light in the clouds at sunset, all lit up in shades of pink and orange and gold. He thought about how badly he wanted someone to hold onto when the daemons in his soul clamored for satisfaction.

He stroked himself faster and faster, the friction bordering on pain and draped himself over the rail to watch the raging water below. The churning whitecaps smashing into the cliff face made him think of cum.  The water swallowed up the rocks, then released them and called to mind his clenching muscles at the moment of climax.

“You should be asleep.”

Prompto nearly jumped out of his skin, let himself go and stood ramrod straight at the sound of Cor's voice. His groin ached. He'd been so close to finishing. To that brief but welcome and thoughtless release.

Cor stood behind him, still dressed but only in an undershirt and trousers, his feet bare in the crumbling grass.

He was an attractive man. A solid, stable man. Someone Prompto looked up to and wished he could be like. Behind the stoic exterior was a kind man. A man who didn't fall apart when things got rough.

Prompto would never hold a candle to that. He would never be as calm as Cor. Nor as strong as Gladio. And never as smart as Ignis.

He used to be the fun one.

Now he didn't even have that.

“Can't,” he said to Cor. He discreetly adjusted himself and turned away so Cor couldn't see the raging boner tenting the front of his pants.

Cor stepped up beside him and took the bottle from his hand. Sniffed it. Handed it back.

“Nightmares?”

“Yepper.”

“Hmm,” Cor said. “It's easy to get caught up in the feelings bad dreams leave behind, but you should remember that's all they are. Dreams.”

“Yeah, except when they aren't,” Prompto said.

“The worst is behind you, Prompto,” Cor said. “All you can do now is keep the faith and do what Noctis would want you to do.”

Cor might as well have run him through. It sucked the wind right out of him.

Noctis wouldn't want this for him. He wouldn't want any of this.

Cor leaned a hip against the fence beside him and let a hand rest against Prompto's shoulder.

That was all it took, to light the fire of want in Prompto's gut. He was still semi-hard, but his dick sprang back to life with a vengeance and his face warmed.

He thought of Cor's big hands wrapped tight around his wrists, his pale eyes slits in the darkness. Cor wasn't so dissimilar to Ardyn in build and size. He had it in him to be merciless when he wanted to be.

“What can I do to help you?” Cor asked.

Prompto's mouth collapsed and he choked on a sob.

“You can fuck me,” he bawled.

He didn't mean to say it out loud.

And Cor stared back, stricken.

Humiliated, Prompto slid to his knees and buried his face in his hands. He panted into his palms, fighting back a river of tears, fighting back the shame of saying that to Cor, of all people.

He fucked people who didn't care. People he might not see again. Not friends or mentors or people he respected.

And Noct was different. Noct was something else entirely.

Noct was the only beautiful memory left, and he could barely think about it without it tearing up his insides.

Cor knelt beside Prompto and brushed a hand over the back of Prompto's head.

For a half a second, Prompto thought Cor might actually take him up on it.

“It's alright,” Cor said. “I get it.”

“It's not alright!” Prompto shouted. He shot to his feet. “Nothing is alright! None of this is fine! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Prompto -”

He hated Cor for his pity. For not being angrier at this situation. He should be furious. For everything, for the loss of his Kingdom and his friends, for having to stand strong while the world around them fell to ruin, for Prompto's pathetic request, but he was so unmoved and so damn unemotional, and here Prompto was, in need of something, anything to shut out the pain and all Cor could say was that it was  _alright_.

Static filled his head, whispering, voices, the ungainly clank of MT's boots against metal floor and he took a deep, slow breath and stepped away from Cor.

Something in his chest unraveled and a eerie silence replaced the noise inside his head.

“Let it out,” Cor said. “You'll feel better.”

“I'm fine,” Prompto said dully. “Forget I said it, okay? I'm drunk. I didn't mean it.”

But he did. He longed for Cor to pull him close, undress him, touch, violate, abuse, scar him. Anything he wanted. Anything at all. He needed someone to need him.  

“I'm sorry for whatever he did,” Cor said. “I know you must be hurting.”

Hurt didn't cover it. Hurt was a broken bone, a laceration. He'd been pulverized.

Fucked up beyond all repair.

When Iris and the recruits arrived in the morning, he identified two among them that would be down to help him take the sting out of his festering wounds.

Even if only for a while. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone interested, the first chapter of Gladio's story is up. It's called "Don't Say A Word," and is attached to this as a part of a series. It's been up for a few days, but I re-wrote the first part of it because I wasn't happy. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading!


	9. Red Hands and White Knuckles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I listened to the shit out of the Bravery while writing this chapter. Hence, the title.
> 
> Thank you guys for reading.

_Before_...

“I do so love your optimism,” Ardyn purred. “But alas, I never intended to let you go.”

Of course not.

Ardyn's grip on his hair tightened until Prompto saw stars. He tilted Prompto's head back, exposed his throat. Lips brushed softly down the side of his neck. Prompto recoiled and arched his head away.

It was a lover's touch, soft and sensual. At odds with the savage assault on his scalp. Dread swelled in his belly. The worst was yet to come. He was sure of it.

“You do so remind me of your father,” Ardyn purred. “Though, not nearly as bright.”

A creator did not a father make. Their shared DNA meant nothing to Prompto.

“He's not my father,” Prompto said through clenched teeth. “He was a monster.”

Ardyn nuzzled his ear, brought his lips to Prompto's temple. Fingers wrapped around Prompto's throat.

“He was barely a man when I first met him,” Ardyn said. “So eager. So innocent. So idealistic. Just like you. If he was a monster, it was because I made him so. Such a pity I don't have the time to do the same for you.”

Prompto didn't want to hear it. He would never be like Verstael Besithia. Never.

“Whatever, dude,” Prompto hissed. “Let's just get this over with.”

“Now, now,” Ardyn said. “Let's not be hasty. We still have hours of fun ahead of us.”

Prompto fixed his eyes on the city lights beyond the doorway, the night sky. If he could break free, he stood a chance. Another fool's hope, but it was the only hope he had left. He wasn't ready to raise a white flag and surrender to whatever sick plans Ardyn had in mind to fill the time between now and Noct's arrival.

Back in elementary school, they'd all taken a class on how to protect themselves in case someone tried to abduct them. Child abductions didn't happen a lot, but often enough that someone felt it necessary to teach the young ones to prevent it from happening. He remembered one tactic in particular had worked well for him: dead weight.

Maybe it was because he was a pudgy ball of flubber, but he distinctly recalled the instructor having an exceptionally hard time trying to drag him away.

The trick was to use gravity, to let his muscles relax, become boneless, liquid. Aim his upper body toward the floor.

In Ardyn's grip, Prompto went limp. He let his torso bend forward, his knees buckle, his head loll on his neck. Ardyn's arm tightened around his midsection and hauled Prompto to his feet, but Prompto imagined himself as gelatin, rubber, something that would slide through Ardyn's fingers like sand.

“You would force me to carry you?” Ardyn asked as Prompto slipped to the floor and lay there, waiting for Ardyn to try. “Have it your way. You won't like the consequences.”

Ardyn bent down and Prompto kicked him square in the face with the sole of his boot. The scream he got in response was more satisfying than any injury he'd caused anyone so far. It felt good to hurt him, even momentarily.

He used Ardyn's surprise to his advantage. He scrambled to his feet and broke for the door.

Cold had a smell. An amazing smell. A smell he never appreciated until now. It was the smell of safety and self-reliance. Of courage and freedom and boldness and bravery.

A frigid wind lashed his cheeks as he stepped out into the night, but he'd never been happier to be cold. All he had to do was keep going.

Down the flight of metal stairs, down through the maze of vehicles and supply containers, to lose himself in the daemon-infested city. He still didn't have a weapon, but he could find one. Anything would do.

Halfway down the staircase, something struck the back of his knees and his legs folded beneath him. He flailed at the handrail to regain his balance, but his head smashed into it instead and he tumbled down the steps, scraping his forehead and bruising his knees and abrading his palms until he came to a stop at the bottom. Impact knocked the wind out of him, but he nevertheless struggled to his knees to keep going.

Arms wrapped around his midsection and lifted him.

“That was very stupid of you, Prompto,” Ardyn said. “Now I'm going to have to punish you for it.”

Before Prompto could re-institute operation boneless, Ardyn tossed him over his shoulder like he weighed nothing. Prompto kicked and struggled as Ardyn returned to the Keep, the upside-down world retreating as fast as his hope. Then remembered gravity was still his friend, and let his body go slack.

Ardyn wasn't playing along this time. He let Prompto go, and Prompto slid to the floor, face first. He cried out as his damaged nose began to bleed again and a tendon in his shoulder tore.

“You're making it harder on yourself than it needs to be.”

Ardyn straddled his legs and pinned his wrists together. Beneath him, Prompto twisted and fought, doing everything in his power to get free. The harder he fought, the rougher Ardyn got.

Fingers dug into his skin, cutting into bone. Something wrapped around his wrists, something thin but sturdy like a boot lace or a wire, and secured them so tight, his fingertips began to tingle.

Not again. _Not again._

Prompto gritted his teeth, ignored the fire in his wounded shoulder and bucked his hips to throw Ardyn off. Above him, Ardyn sneered, his eyes alight with anger. A trickle of drying blood spilled from Ardyn's mouth. It looked black in the dim light.

Good. That felt good. To see him wounded.

Ardyn snapped his fingers. Three MT's moved out of the shadows, the soles of their boots an arrhythmic, out-of-step march. They blocked the door and his only path toward freedom.

“Are you going to behave or will I have to ask your brothers to discipline you?”

“They're not my brothers.”

Noct and Ignis and Gladio. They were his brothers, whether they took him back or not. They were his family. They would always be his family.

Ardyn touched Prompto's lips. Ran his thumb along the bottom of his jaw, down to the hollow of his throat.

“Why are you doing this?” Prompto asked.

“Isn't it obvious?” Ardyn asked.

He wanted Prompto to lay down and take it. To submit like a good boy.

Well fuck that. He kept fighting. There was nothing left, he was running on fumes and a prayer, but he would not let this bastard break him.

“Get him on his feet,” Ardyn ordered. “Take him to interrogation room two.”

Prompto knew better than to fight the MT's. He'd already tried that once. They wouldn't let go unless they were ordered. He had the bruises to prove it. There was nothing he could do to hurt them without his hands free.

A hand clamped down on each arm and lifted him to his feet. He gritted his teeth at the bone crushing pressure around his biceps and stumbled along the corridor behind Ardyn.

“Tell me why."

“Because I can,” Ardyn said.

“Noct will kill you.”

“I do hope so,” Ardyn said. “He's become such a bore. Moping around and dragging his heels like a lovesick schoolboy. It's really rather pathetic. I expected so much more from the King of Light.”

The closer they came to their destination, the greater the sense of dread. He knew what was coming, just not the reason for it.

Inside the interrogation room, which was outfitted with all kinds of fucked-up looking devices, Prompto got scared. Really, really scared.

This wasn't an interrogation room, it was a torture chamber.

“Put him on the table,” Ardyn said.

The MT's slammed Prompto face-down against a metal surface, his wrists left in their bindings. He struggled against them, but there was no point. All he managed to do was hurt himself more.

Tears spilled from the corners of his eyes. Across the room, Ardyn ran his hand over a tray of metal objects that looked medical. Scalpels. Forceps. Clamps.

“Tell me why,” Prompto said. “You owe me at least that.”

“I suppose I _could_ tell you,” Ardyn said. He lifted a scalpel from the tray and examined the blade. “Will it really matter to you in the end?”

“I deserve to know why you want to hurt me,” Prompto said. “I haven't done anything to you.”

“It's not about you.”

“Noct?” Prompto asked. “What did he do to you?”

“Your dear Noctis is but a means to an end,” Ardyn said. “I've waited a very long time for this.”

Ardyn came closer. Prompto couldn't focus on anything but the glint of the scalpel in his hand.

“I've given him so many opportunities to end this,” Ardyn said. “I took his father. The families of those closest to him. Killed his bride to be. Goaded his best friend into putting on that accursed ring, rendering him all but useless.” Ardyn sighed and shook his head dramatically. “Such a pity, that one. Your dear Ignis... Now that is a man fit to be a King. I truly enjoyed our little spat.”

Ardyn scraped the edge of the scalpel against Prompto's jaw. Lightly, but the threat was clear.

“I don't understand.”

“You couldn't possibly understand the depth of my hatred.”

Dark, veiny lines slithered up Ardyn's neck and over his cheeks. His eye sockets hollowed out and deepened. His complexion turned corpse-like. This was not a mortal man. A monster.  

A daemon.

“For Noctis?” Prompto asked in a small voice. "Why do you hate him so much?"

_Keep him talking. Buy yourself time._

Time for what, Prompto didn't know. Maybe, he hoped Noctis and crew would burst in at the last minute and rescue him from a second round of humiliation and assault.

_Make him hurt you instead. Bones and bruises heal._

“For everything,” Ardyn said. His gold eyes began to glow. “Do you know what its like to be so betrayed? To have everything taken from you? Even your very soul?”

As if being here alone wasn't a form of betrayal.

As if he wasn't at risk of losing everything he cared about.

As if Ardyn hadn't already taken parts of his soul and claimed them for himself.

“Is that why you're doing this?” Prompto asked. “Because someone hurt you?”

Ardyn came closer. His pale, half-rotted hand swept the bangs from Prompto's eyes. Prompto shuddered at the contact.

“I came to realize along our journey together, you were what Noct loved most,” Ardyn said. “He was so angry with me for daring to touch you. Do you recall?”

Prompto remembered. Unexpected. Uninvited. Unwanted. That touch lingered, kept him awake in the caravan that night. Unsettled and unnerved.

Noctis wanted to kill him. That much was clear.

“So, this _is_ about Noct?” Prompto asked, genuinely confused.

Ardyn brushed a fingertip over Prompto's shoulder. Always the lover's touch. Prompto wished he was brave enough to bite that finger, but in his other hand was the scalpel, and Prompto didn't trust Ardyn wouldn't silt his throat for trying.

“This is so much greater than one spoiled little boy,” Ardyn said. “It's about what I was denied. About how the Gods punished me for using the gifts they gave me.”

Prompto still didn't understand, but Ardyn seemed lost in his thoughts. He looked troubled. Genuinely upset.

“I lifted the burdens of the sick. I healed their wounds,” Ardyn said. “And what, pray tell, did I get in return?”

He leaned in closer, his face obliterating all the light in the room.

“Exile. Abuse. My very birthright stripped from my hands,” he said. “A body that won't die at the hands of any but the King of Light.”

Prompto blinked in surprise.

“So, Noct's supposed to kill you?” he asked. “Why don't you just let him, if it's that bad?”

Ardyn laughed like Prompto had told the best joke he'd ever heard.

“You fool boy,” Ardyn said. Gold eyes burned like twin flames. “Not even with an army at his side could Noctis bring me down. No, I want what is rightfully _mine_. I want the Gods to recognize _me_ as the chosen king, as it should have been two thousand years ago.”

He lashed out and gripped Prompto by the hair again. Prompto gritted his teeth and cried out.

“I've tried again and again to get Noctis to come to me, so that we can fulfill our destiny together, so that my suffering might finally end,” Ardyn said. “Ruining you will give him the push that he so desperately needs. _That_ is why I'm doing this.”

Ardyn let go of his hair and Prompto dropped his head back to the cold metal table. He closed his eyes. Flexed his numb hands.

Gods, he was so tired. Tired of fighting. Of hearing Ardyn talk.

Ardyn snapped his fingers. The MT's surrounded the table. One clamped a hand around the back of Prompto's neck. Another undid the bindings around his wrists. A third lifted him to his feet.

Ardyn loomed over him, daemon and man combined. Prompto's knees knocked together as Ardyn drew closer.

“Remove his shirt.”

The MT's obeyed.

“Lock him down.”

They returned him to the table, the same as before, but this time, his wrists were cuffed somewhere above his head. The MT's removed his boots and pants, leaving him stripped down to flesh and entirely at Ardyn's mercy.

Cold metal slid down his spine, to the cleft of his ass.

The scalpel.

“Why not just kill me instead?”

“I'd much rather send you back to him a broken toy,” Ardyn said. “He won't want you after I'm done, of course. There's no value in broken things for boys like Noctis.”

Fingers twined through his hair. A hand stroked his back. Prompto shuddered at the tender contact. Exhaled and bit down on his bottom lip to hold in a sob. Blood or sweat trickled down his spine.

Ardyn picked something up from the table beside him. Something much more terrifying than a scalpel.

He switched it on and the whir of an electric motor filled the room. Prompto fixed his eyes on it and began to shiver and sweat, swore under his breath and prayed for someone to intervene. 

A bone-saw, the blade a bright spinning disk in Ardyn's hand.

The tool sang and sparked as Ardyn laid the edge of the blade against the table. Prompto jumped and choked on a scream.

“You're going to play your part like a good little servant,” Ardyn said over the noise. “You'll sacrifice yourself for his sake because you love him so dearly, you would _die_ for him.”

Those mocking, unkind words embedded themselves beneath Prompto's skin, burrowing in like ticks to bleed him dry.

“What is it about dear Noctis that inspires such reckless loyalty?” Ardyn asked, sounding truly disturbed for the first time, “When he's the poorest excuse for a King I've seen since my fool brother robbed me of my crown. You would die for him, yet what has he done for you?”

What had he done?

More than Prompto could ever pay back in this lifetime or the next. He'd given Prompto a reason to live.

_Please forgive me Noct. For this. For what I am._

The bone-saw hovered perilously close to Prompto's trigger finger. His hand twitched under the artificial wind. Lips pressed between his shoulder blades. A tongue ran along the shell of his ear.

Prompto whimpered. Squeezed his eyes shut.

“The choice is yours,” Ardyn said. “Give yourself over to me, or I can make this very, very painful and I'll still take what I want.”

Either way, he was fucked. Both in the actual sense and the figurative one.

“Which is it?”

“Please.”

“Will you surrender to me?” Ardyn asked.

Fingers stroked his asshole, fingers that were slick with saliva or if he was lucky, lube. He instinctively clenched, but relaxed as those fingers massaged so gently, it sent whorls of unexpected pleasure straight to his groin.

Enduring was not the same as giving in.

It wasn't.

“That's it,” Ardyn cooed. “Just relax and think of this as the sacrifice you must make for your King.”

A finger pushed past fragile skin and rigid muscle. Prompto bit down on his lip until he tasted blood. The bone-saw shifted to the juncture just below the cuff around his wrist.

Hovered there.

He was shaking now, a one-man earthquake, his thighs quivering, his body involuntarily clenching around that invasive, unwelcome finger.

“What is your decision?”

Prompto wanted none of this, but if it came down to a choice between losing a hand and still having to submit, he would chose to give in, check out, and wait for it to be over. He could be thick, but he wasn't stupid. Bruises and fractures would heal, but a lost limb would not grow back.

He didn't trust that Ardyn wouldn't take the hand anyway.  Had to take the chance.

“Sacrifice,” Prompto said breathlessly, raggedly, on the verge of crying. “Whatever you want.”

Ardyn dropped the bone-saw next to Prompto's face. The motor sputtered and died. He focused on the cold, shining steel of the blade and the reflection of the light above. Moths flitted around the bulb, frantic black things hell-bent on flying too close to the source of their demise. Hands wrapped around his forearms, just below his wrists.

Prompto drew in a breath.

_“You okay, buddy?”_

Exhaled as Ardyn pressed into him. Slowly.

And Prompto left his body. He floated above himself, above Ardyn, unable to feel this, dead but still breathing, the only sentient witness to the crime. Dark blotches marred his pale skin. A thin line of blood trailed down his spine. Ardyn tasted it. Lapped it up.

He was aware of his body moving, his hips rocking against the edge of the table and the soft whimpers trapped behind closed lips. He was there and not there, half of him with the ruined boy below, the other half drifting toward sunlight and the scent of warm, damp earth, lake water. Toward Noctis and his accursed fishing pole, sitting on the end of a dock at Malacchi Pond, the water a vivid, impossible, and unearthly green.

Prompto breathed in the fresh air and ignored his other self down there on the table. That Prompto was a piece of meat, devoid of a consciousness. This Prompto, the one standing barefoot on the dock in pure, unfiltered sunlight, Ardyn could never touch.

Noctis glanced over his shoulder. Smiled the rarest of all smiles. The one that made his whole face light up from within. An adoring smile. A pure and kind smile. One that caused the synapses in Prompto's brain to misfire and his pituitary gland to work overtime and fill his veins with feel-good chemicals more powerful than any drug in the world.

_Do you have any clue how much I love you, buddy?_

_Was there ever a time you thought maybe you loved me too?_

_Gods, if you did, don't ever tell me, okay?_

_I can't handle knowing._

_Not now._

“Fishing sucks today,” Noctis said. “Wanna go for a swim?”

Prompto smelled snow, glaciers, rusting metal. Blood. Heard his pathetic whimpers from somewhere down low. The steady singing of frogs.

“Water's too cold,” Prompto said. “I'll freeze my balls off.”

“C'mon,” Noct said. “It's hot out here.”

The clear green water was inviting, calling out to him, a siren song, a baptism. It might be what he needed to wash away the unclean sensation of what was happening to the boy below.

Noctis returned his fishing pole to the Armiger and stood. Behind him, Ardyn bit down on the other Prompto's back.

**_Give into me, Prompto..._ **

He felt the sting of teeth tearing into his skin. Here on the dock, his fists clenched at his sides. Tears pricked in the corners of his eyes.

Then Noct's hands were on his face, his smile gone. He was all tender concern, pale blue eyes hiding behind a fringe of black.

“You okay?”

“It's all good, buddy,” Prompto said.

_As long as I'm here with you._

Noctis flashed a bright, mischievous and unexpected grin. His hand gripped Prompto's belt. Prompto's breath caught in his throat, gods yes, but then Noct slung him over the edge of the dock and let go.

And Prompto was falling from the train, Noct's horrified, scared face above and receding fast. Ardyn's satisfied grin, his pleasured moans buried just above Prompto's ear. The steady rocking, friction, unexpected warmth, dull pleasure in his pelvis.

He hit the water with a splash, the flawless blue of the sky above rippled. Cold enveloped his body and he floated, just beneath the surface, Noct above, the dark below. He could stay here in limbo, trapped somewhere between heaven and hell if he wanted. Hold his breath and wait for the cold to seep into his bones, wait for the numbness to dull the pain.

Wait to drown, for real this time.

He chose to lose himself in some bright, sunny corner of his mind where Noct loved him back. Better here, where he couldn't feel it.

He kicked toward the sunlight, broke the surface and sputtered. Noct's belly laugh softened the blow. Noctis never looked this light and unburdened.

“You are so dead,” Prompto said, his teeth chattering.

Noctis kicked off his shoes, peeled off his shirt, still laughing, and dove in. He popped up a few seconds later within arm's reach.

“Cold,” Noctis said.

“You think?” Prompto said. “You're going down for this.”

Noctis grinned.

That twinkle in his eye. _Gods_.

“Yeah? You and whose army?”

Prompto surged forward to administer the required punishment. His arms slipped around Noct's neck, prepared to drag him under the water.

Noctis' lips met his instead. A hand clasped the back of his head, fingers in his damp hair, and he was all fire and want, hungry and eager for more.

Gods, yes. This was all he wanted.

“Stay with me, Prom.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” Prompto said. “I'm with you, buddy. Always.”

But the chill crept back in, the croaking of frogs lost beneath the restless skittering of daemons and the steady rocking like he'd been lost at sea. A tongue, gross and foreign, slithered over his earlobe. Hot breath moistened the skin of his neck. Building pressure in his groin.

“Don't make promises you can't keep,” Noctis said.

He trailed a finger down the side of Prompto's face, so lightly, like the brush of moths wings, and stared at the blank-eyed Prompto below. His hand dropped away. The hurt in his eyes split Prompto's heart in two.

“I never thought you'd betray me like this.”

“You think I have a choice?” Prompto asked. His face crumpled. Tears spilled down his cheeks. “Please, Noct. Forgive me, okay? I don't want any of this. You have to believe me.”

Noctis turned his face away.

“I can't even look at you.”

“Noct, please.”

The sun winked out, a light switch turned off, and all he was left with was the cold, the MT's. Ardyn. The steady slap of skin against skin.

The dull throb deep inside.

He was desperate with the need for release. For just ten seconds of mindless bliss, where he didn't feel terror or pain.

Prompto rested his forehead against the cold metal table. Each deep thrust brought him closer to the precipice, sparks lit up behind his closed lids, his body was in revolt. A hand closed around his dick and stroked the length of him, in time with Ardyn's rough penetration.

He didn't want to hurt anymore.

He gave in.

He let go.

His stifled whimpers became low moans as he lost himself in it, and he came with a hot pulse in Ardyn's hand, his body convulsing from head to toe, crying out, reduced to a mindless, thoughtless animal there on the table. Never in his life had he come so hard, or for so long. Never had it left him so emptied out and on the verge of losing consciousness.

Ardyn's laughter brought him back. It was the laugh of the victorious. The triumphant.

The cruel.

“Oh, my,” Ardyn murmured. “What have you done?”

_Oh, Gods._

Prompto's face collapsed and a long, broken wail rose up from somewhere deep inside him. Ardyn's lips smiled against his temple and he said the words Prompto feared most:

“Your dear Noctis will never forgive you for this.”

 

* * *

 

Prompto was glad to see Iris. Once the recruits were settled in on their cots on the ground floor, she joined him in his room for a drink and conversation. He skipped the formality of glasses and offered her the bottle.

She drank a small measure, set the bottle down on the coffee table and sank onto the couch. Prompto noticed a new scar on her left shoulder. It looked like a bad one.

“Gladio seen that yet?”

“Yeah,” she said. “He wasn't too happy, but he's coming around. You know Gladdy. Never wants to admit he was wrong.”

“He at least apologized, didn't he?”

“Nope,” she said. “What about you? How are things on your end?”

“Hanging in there.”

By a thread. He avoided interaction with Cor if he could help it. He was still too ashamed of his behavior to face him.

“You don't look so hot,” she said.

“Yeah, well, nobody looks great these days,” Prompto said. “Endless night sure takes it out of you, huh?”

He picked up the bottle and took a long swallow. It wasn't one of the hunters best batches, but it did what it was supposed to.

“You shouldn't drink so much.”

“You here to get on my case or hang out?”

“Both, I guess.”

Prompto sighed. He wondered when everyone was going to give up on him. No time soon, it looked like.

“I just don't want to see you get killed.”

“Maybe that's better than becoming a daemon.”

Iris stiffened.

“Is... that what all this is about?”

“All what?”

“You drinking too much and sleeping around and all that.”

“I don't want to talk about that,” he said. “I'm just trying to cope, okay? I've got it handled.”

Iris didn't mention it again. She stayed only a little while and talked about other things. Ignis' research. About how Gladio had taken up his father's post. Her own duties training recruits and hunting with Cor.

After she turned in for the night, Prompto paced the room, restless and aching to be anywhere but here. Eventually, he drank himself to sleep.

A second batch of recruits arrived a day after Iris. Among them was the man who'd given Hecate such a hard time in Galdin Quay.

“Watch out for that guy,” Prompto warned Iris. He'd already caught the guy eyeing her like she was a delicious desert. “He gave a friend of mine some trouble a while back.”

“Don't worry about me,” Iris said. “I can handle it.”

She probably could. In the three years since she'd been training with Cor, she'd grown strong and competent. He could see that from the way the recruits listened to her and followed her lead. Gone was the girlish insecurity and the cutesy chatter about nail polish and boy bands and trendy things. This new Iris was a force unto herself.

Nothing happened the first two days. Prompto trained a pair of teenagers, one girl and one boy, both refugees, on firearms techniques and took them out to fight low-level daemons while Cor and Iris did the same with their trainees.

Prompto was good at teaching, to his own surprise. And maybe it was because he could relate to the plight of the displaced, or because he was closer to their age than Cor, but he found himself quite comfortable being the one the refugees went to with questions.

“A word, Prompto?” Cor said at the end of the second day.

If it was about his drunken idiocy, he didn't want to talk.

It wasn't.

“I know the last few years have been hard for you, but I want you to know, you're doing a good job,” Cor said. “Your help with the refugees has been invaluable.”

Humbled, Prompto kicked at the dirt.

“Thank you, sir,” Prompto said.

“You've earned the right to call me Cor,” he said. He patted Prompto's shoulder. “Go grab something to eat and get some rest. Tomorrow's another busy day.”

Prompto didn't eat. He helped serve the meal Iris and a few of the younger recruits prepared and cleaned the dishes and pretended he didn't see the tall young man watching him with interest from across the room.

His eyes reminded Prompto of Noctis. The same sleepy eyes, green and not blue, hiding behind artfully unkempt bangs.

_“I never thought you'd betray me like this.”_

He had to get this under control. He could lie to everyone around him and say he knew what he was doing, that he had it covered, but he couldn't lie to himself anymore. He was not in control. He'd never been in control.

All he had to do was say the word. All he had to do was catch the man's eye and smile back. No need for conversation. No need to play games. No pretenses.

It was like a secret code. A specific pheromone on the wind. Women, Prompto was never sure of, never quite picked up on the signs until it was right there in his face or sitting in his lap, but men just seemed to know, like a sixth sense.

And he was picking up on all kinds of signals from the dark-haired guy.

_You'll hate yourself._

Just one more time. He'd do it one more time, and that would be the end of it. Get it out of his system, let it out, kill the hunger, and then he'd go cold turkey.

That's what he told himself every time.

Every single time, he gave in.

It was no different this time. Once the meal was through and the trainees settled in, he brushed past Prompto, gave a knowing smile, the kind that said he had Prompto's number, knew what was up.

“Lighthouse? Ten minutes?”

“Yeah,” Prompto said. “I might see you there.”

* * *

 

Prompto leaned over the railing at the top of the lighthouse, his body still tingling, his mind empty, and listened to the sound of retreating footsteps on the stairs.

Another notch on his belt. Another scar on his soul.

He hadn't really wanted it. He just needed... he didn't know what he needed anymore, but it wasn't this.

He wouldn't go back yet. He didn't want to face Iris or Cor or their unspoken concerns.

This. All of this was eating him from the inside out. Ten minutes from now, he'd be back to feeling like shit about himself and the cycle would repeat tomorrow.

What would it take to make it stop?

How the hell did he ask for help with something like this?

From the armiger, he summoned his Lionheart. The intricate scroll work on the weapon was something to behold. Almost too pretty to be anything more than a showpiece, but it was powerful. All it would take was one well-placed bullet to make this all stop.

He drew in a shuddering breath and closed his eyes.

After everything that had happened, he still wanted to live, even if he wasn't sure if there was anything left to live for, he wasn't ready to give up.

Giving up meant Ardyn had won.

“Really wish you were here right now, Noct,” Prompto said. He looked up to a sky absent stars. “Everything sucks because you're gone, you know.”

He returned the Lionheart to he Armiger.

“Tell me what I'm supposed to do, 'cause I'm not doing so hot all by myself.”

The night gave him no answer. No comfort.

He needed a drink.

“I miss you, buddy,” he said. “And I'm sorry I never said it, but... I love you. And... I'm sorry.”

Everything hurt. Every molecule, every cell. They'd wasted so much time dancing around each other, pretending they were okay with just being friends. Suffered through those awkward moments where it could have been more. Both too chickenshit to play ball.

He felt it start to bubble up inside him, all the rage and pain and regret he'd kept buried for the last three years. He felt it burning through him like acid, dissolving his flesh and vital organs. No amount of self-abuse could purge it, only fed it until it was a beast unto itself, a daemon living inside his chest, feeding on what was left of him.

He definitely needed a drink.

Down the stairs and out onto the brightly lit pathway back to the house, he seethed and scratched at his skin to distract himself from the building pressure inside his brain. Sirens and crackling static and cries of pain and pleasure all mingled together to drown out the sound of the sea. It was crawling all over him like insects, like Ardyn's hands down there in the keep, and -

_Shit. Stop it._

_Stop it, stop it, stoppit._

_Get a hold of yourself._

He withdrew his gun from the armiger. Crossed the yard, left the safety of the lights behind.

He'd put his fate in the hands of the Gods. Not that they'd done anyone he knew any favors. They were assholes like that, but maybe they'd show him mercy and put him out of his misery. Spare him from having to do it himself.

Past the last spotlight, Prompto strode through a stand of trees in search of something to kill or let kill him. Kudzu and brambles clung to his pants and boots, scratched his bare arms and face. Maybe the daemons would smell fresh blood and come out to greet him.

The eerie silence and false corridors made out of vegetation reminded him of the Keep. At any second, some fresh horror would slither out of the darkness and drag him away from the safety of the lights behind him.

Hunting alone wasn't advisable. Cor made it pretty clear, only the most experienced hunters take on daemons by themselves.

Prompto wasn't hunting. If the Gods were just, he wouldn't be returning alive.

He got his wish on the other side of the thicket, where the trees gave way to a small meadow overlooking the sea. The ground rippled, shining tar boiled up from the earth. Telltale purple-magenta light pulsed and swelled as the daemon took shape, huge and terrifying and exactly what he wanted.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Kill me.”

The red giant took a swipe. Its massive palm smashed into Prompto and sent him flying. He closed his eyes and imagined himself soaring off the edge of a dock and into ice cold water, into the tumultuous sea, pushed under and held there to drown for real this time.

He hit the ground hard, rolled, came to a stop with his face in the dirt. The earth beneath him shuddered as the giant came closer. The hair on the back of Prompto's neck prickled. Something warm and damp pooled between his chest and his shirt.

The Gods were assholes.

The red giant would kill him, right here, right now, and Noct would come back tomorrow. That was the way it worked. Noct would come back to the news that his best friend was a reckless idiot who got himself killed for no good reason.

“Shit.”

It slammed a fist into the ground beside him and he yelped, shot to his feet and backed away. He fired off a starshell and took off through the trees, back toward the safety of the lights and the house like the little coward he was.

Too afraid to die. Too afraid to live. Too petrified of the daemons in his head to do anything but run away.

A shadow moved at the side of the house and Prompto stopped running.

Ardyn. Smiling. His eyes aglow. He tipped his hat and bowed with a flourish.

“Motherfucker.”

A hand clamped over his mouth. Lips pressed to his temple.

“Don't scream.”

He didn't scream, but he struggled.

“Do ye remember me?”

The man from Galdin. He'd warned Iris away from him, but hadn't been worried about himself. The guy hadn't seemed interested.

But, oh, he was interested. His hand slipped down the front of Prompto's pants and took hold of him.

“I heard about ye, boy. How about lettin' me have a turn?”

Ardyn, in the shadows smiled in triumph.

Prompto bit down on the man's hand and threw an elbow back into his stomach. The man grunted in pain, his grip loosened, and Prompto broke free.

For about two seconds.

He was tackled low, around the thighs and he slammed into the ground, pinned there by the man's weight.

“This won't take long, boy.”

“Get off!” Prompto shouted.

He bucked to throw the man off his back, writhed and kicked, but the harder he fought, the more ground he lost.

A fleeting shadow danced at the edges of his vision, the soft crunch of gravel almost too light to be anything but his imagination, and then a sickening thud, a wet, sticky sound. Warm rain spilled over him, hot and thick and scented of metal and salt.

Prompto closed his eyes.

The man became dead weight against his back. Hot tears that didn't belong to him poured down the side of his face.

“Prompto, are you okay?”

The weight rolled away, small hands brushed through his hair, found his face.

He opened his eyes.

A shovel lay in the dirt beside Iris, her face lost to shadow, but he focused on the wine-black blood on the edge of the spade. It looked like the ooze that the daemons bled. Like the hateful tar that Ardyn wore on his face like a badge of honor.

“Let's get you up,” she said. Her voice was unsteady. Breathy. “Get you inside, okay?”

Prompto obeyed. That thing from before was boiling just beneath the surface, but he was as calm as a puddle, the cacophony in his head silent. It was there, way down low, all that hatred and anger, all coiled up like a nest of snakes, Naga's hair, a tangle of electrified wire. It wanted out.

Iris clasped his arm and laid a hand against his back. Guided him up the steps the way Prompto once guided Ignis. Up to his room, where she shut the door and seated him in a chair.

His skin was numb. There was no roof in the room, just an endless sky full of sparkling stars and the scent of campfire.

Iris went to the bathroom to wet a washcloth and returned with his bottle of hooch for good measure. She pressed it into his hands, and he drank like an obedient little soldier, born to take orders, and Gods, he was so sick of trying to be good, trying to make it through without coming apart, but this had to stop.

He finished what was left in the bottle without offering any to Iris. Stood up. Hurled the bottle against the wall. His insides felt like the sound it made.

“It's okay, Prompto,” Iris said.

Something about that sound let loose a chain reaction of explosions inside his head. His vision went white, then edged in red, and almost without thinking, he picked up a chair and smashed it against the coffee table. The candle in the glass holder went flying, along with the dog-eared magazines and empty mugs and paper plates left there for days.

He upended the coffee table, screaming, cursing, lashing out at inanimate objects, losing his mind, the rage and pain all gone supernova while Iris cowered in the corner, then disappeared through the door, calling out for Cor.

Pictures were ripped from the wall and smashed on the floor, the curtains torn from the rod, the sheets and blankets from the bed. It was all a blur, he could barely see through the cloudy, red fury, could barely breathe behind the howls and steady stream of curses that spilled from his lips.

_Fuck this, fuck him, fuck everything, and fuck you too, Noct._

_Let it all fucking burn._

And Cor stood before him, shocked, shaken, his eyes glistening with moisture. Prompto faced him. The remains of a lamp in his grip, unsure if he intended to use it as a weapon or finish it off. He knew how this must look to them. Like he'd gone mad, lost his mind. It felt like he had.

Cor held out a hand and angled his head at the lamp.

“May I?”

Prompto dropped the lamp, pressed his face into his palms and slid to his knees. He folded his arms over his head, half expecting to be struck or grabbed or forced to do one more thing he couldn't live with.

Cor knelt before him but didn't touch.

“It's okay, Prompto,” Cor said. “Just let go.”

Prompto had already let go.

He was in free-fall.

And the world was bottomless.


	10. The End of a Lullaby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Evil Friend" by Deadboy and the Elephantmen.

_Before..._

  
Prompto watched Ardyn move about the room through half-closed eyes, his heart and mind numb. His body, too, had lost all sense of feeling. He was sure it was just as cold in here as before, but his shivers ceased like he'd acclimated to the cold. Wounds that should have hurt like hell were minor annoyances. Like he'd been drugged.

Or he'd finally reached his threshold. Shut down, stopped processing. Like a broken machine.

Ardyn muttered to himself as he paced, the words either incoherent rambles or jumbled because of the aforementioned mental shut-down.

Whatever he was saying, he appeared agitated, maybe even distressed. He dragged his fingers through his hair and tugged on the greasy strands with his teeth clenched, circled the room like he was the prisoner. Every now and then he cast a troubled stare at Prompto, one that read as regret or something even deeper.

Prompto closed his eyes and drifted, back to Insomnia, to school days and afternoons at the arcade. Tie loosened, jacket bundled up in his backpack, sleeves rolled up. Back to his lonely house where silence spoke volumes.

He wondered if his parents ever loved him. If they cared. He'd always been too afraid to ask, and anyway, they were barely involved in his life once he was old enough to look after himself. They hadn't even come to see him graduate. The last time he spoke to them was weeks before he finished his training. Neither seemed to care one way or another.

Maybe they didn't. He could live without the answer to that question.

They weren't his family anyway.

A strange skittering lifted him from his descent into memory and he opened his eyes to near pitch darkness and a hoard of beings that were once human but well on their way to becoming something else. They stood around the table, their bodies jerking and trembling, their glowing eyes full of pain and madness. Prompto tensed and jerked against the restraints as they drew closer.

The room smelled of rot, of ozone and blood. He whined behind closed lips and fought stupidly and ineffectually, trying to free himself from the clamps around his wrists before they could touch him.

Gods, he didn't want them to touch him. Of all the ways he could have died so far, this had to be the worst.

“Please,” he croaked. “Ardyn, please.”

“Do not be afraid, boy,” Ardyn said softly. “You're in good company.”

Good company.

What the fuck did that mean?

They leaned in like a flock of curious birds, carrion birds, hungry to tear him apart. Black, viscous fluid dripped from their decaying skin, from their open mouths. A hand touched his back and Prompto screamed.

“Get them off me!” he cried. “Please. Please.”

“I _do_ love to hear you beg,” Ardyn said. “I'd put you on your knees to beg properly, if I trusted that you wouldn't run away.”

The hand touched his hair. Nails scratched lightly at the back of his neck.

“Two thousand years, and this world has never shown me an ounce of mercy,” Ardyn said. “They came to me in droves, asking me for salvation, and I took from them the disease that afflicted them. And what did I get in return?”

The odor of rot was going to make him puke up the acid in his empty stomach.

“They destroyed me,” Ardyn said softly. Fingers brushed through his hair. “I've given you but a fraction of my pain.”

Prompto repeated his plea, over and over again, to drown out the chittering-clicking wets sounds of the daemons, to silence Ardyn's voice. He was almost unaware that his hands had been released from the cuffs, that Ardyn had rolled him onto his back, until he opened his eyes and saw two dozen glowing eyes looking back.

Ardyn's hands stroked his skin, gliding over his stomach and down the length of his arms and his lips kissed whichever spot the landed upon until they found Prompto's mouth. That vile tongue parted his lips and invaded, cold and slippery and foreign. Prompto clenched his teeth against it but relented when Ardyn's hand circled his throat.

“Give yourself to me,” Ardyn said. “Not as my captive, but as a lover. Show me your mercy.”

Mercy. What did Ardyn know of mercy?

Was there a moment when Ardyn had shown Prompto compassion? Was being allowed to live a mercy? When he would have to live the rest of his life with the memory of Ardyn's hands on him?

 _Better than dead, Prompto_.

Was it?

_Was it?_

“What will you do if I say no?”

Ardyn's finger traced the outline of his mouth.

“I suppose the daemons would be happy to keep you company,” he said. “Would you prefer to be left alone in the dark? Imagine what they would do to an unarmed, weak little boy.”

Prompto closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Pictured himself cowering in the corner, unable to stop their advance. They would rip him to shreds or turn him into one of them. He would cease to be either way.

He couldn't think of Noctis. Or hope for his forgiveness.

Did he want to live? Was there life after this?

After everything, after the hell he'd been through, the answer was still somehow _yes_. He wanted to live. After everything, he still wanted to believe.

Would he be able to live with himself after this? If he said yes, would he be beyond redemption?

Ardyn's sins were already written all over his body, etched into his skin, burned into his soul. Would it really make a difference? One more time, a thousand times, it was all the same. He'd already been ruined.

“What is your answer?” Ardyn purred. “Will you be merciful, or would you deny me as countless others have done for centuries?”

There was only one way to get through this. He could fake it. Pretend he was into it.

“Mercy,” he said.

When Ardyn kissed his lips, Prompto kissed back like he meant it, eagerly, hungrily, and was rewarded with Ardyn's pleased moan against his mouth. If he knew Prompto was putting on a show, he didn't let on.

His lips tasted of ash. He smelled of the smoke of an extinguished candlewick. His weight was crushing, but Prompto relaxed and let him in, willingly, just as he asked.

Fingers circled Prompto's wrists, skin moved against skin, Ardyn's touch almost tender. Prompto closed his eyes and shut out everything but sensation. No guilt. No fear. Nothing but the barely controlled burn of friction and pleasure.

Gods, it felt good. Not to think or hurt.

But _fuck_ mercy.

He wrapped his legs around Ardyn's waist and bit down on his lip until his teeth cut through skin. Tasted not the warm salt of blood but something bitter and cold, like the gin and tonic his father used to drink.

It sent Prompto into a frenzy, like a shark scenting blood in the water, like a star imploding, a black hole sucking all the matter from the space around it. Fury and madness mixed together and he ripped an arm free from Ardyn's grasp and dug his fingers into his back, nails raking across his skin his breaths heavy and his moans rising in volume. He bit down on Ardyn's shoulder, clawed at his scalp, his hips rose up off the table to meet Ardyn's thrusts halfway, _take me, break me, fuck me, hurt me, throw me away, but_ fuck _your mercy._

_You don't deserve it._

_And neither do I._  

* * *

 

Iris kept bringing blankets. Pillows. She made tea that Prompto didn't touch. Tended the wound on his chest that he hadn't felt. Asked questions that he didn't answer.

Potions were in short supply and the wound was deep, but not life-threatening enough to warrant the use of a curative. Best to save those for nastier wounds.

Cor stitched it closed like he'd done it a hundred times. He probably had by now. Applied ointment and taped a piece of gauze over it to keep out germs and debris. All in a careful silence in which he exchanged looks with Iris like they could communicate telepathically.

Prompto was spent, eviscerated, lying prone on the bed, his face turned toward the ever-present darkness at the window, wishing that hellfire would rain from the sky and end all of this. For him. For everyone who had to suffer through the long night, for those that had to fight to stay alive. Exhausting, to try and live this way.

He was beyond tired. He'd reached critical mass. Was experiencing irrevocable mechanical failure. He was a five alarm structure fire. Best to let him burn to the ground because there was no saving him.

For a while, he closed his eyes and divorced himself from reality. Lucid and aware of the hushed conversation between Iris and Cor, but also lost in a fantasy where he had the courage to tell an eighteen-year-old Noctis he was stupidly, hopelessly in love, in a non-existent alternate lifetime where they held hands and took advantage of his lack of supervision at home.

It was nice for a while. Until it pissed him off to think about all the time they could have enjoyed each other instead of being two idiots who couldn't open their mouths and admit it.

Too fucking late now, wasn't it?

If he didn't stop looking back, he was going to drown in it. There was no choice but to pick himself up, dust himself off, and get on with it, but he couldn't even muster the energy to brush his hair anymore. How the hell was he supposed to crawl out of the hell he'd landed in if everything he did stoked the fire?

Cor and Iris whispered to each other on the other side of the room, conspiring like a pair of thieves. Prompto could only make out a word or two here and there, but it was obvious they were discussing him. Iris kept casting glances his way, and Cor looked like a sinner about to confess every crime he'd ever committed to the Gods themselves.

Prompto ignored them. He slept. Dreamed of lying on the beach at Galdin Quay, letting his skin drink in sunlight and the gentle waves lap at his feet.

The sea was tar. Black as ink, thick as syrup. It crawled up his legs like vines, underneath his skin. Bleeding from his pores. Melting him like candle wax.

He woke gasping for air, a whimper caught in his throat and grasped at the sheets and the piles of blankets. It was too hot. He was burning up, but he didn't have the energy to untangle himself from the layers of fabric wrapped around him like a cocoon. Anyway, he was safe here. No one could touch him.

Iris offered him more tea. Prompto refused and burrowed deeper into the blankets and shut out the rest of the world. If he engaged, he would have to face a truth he'd denied since the moment Ardyn released him. He would be expected to talk. To acknowledge it.

And Gods, he was so _tired_. Like he hadn't slept a wink in the last three years.

He was only dimly aware of another visitor, a third person in the room, a person he knew by scent alone. Heavy footsteps crossed the room and stopped somewhere on the far side of the bed.

“How long's he been like this?”

“A while,” Iris said. “He just sort of snapped.”

“Goddamnit,” Gladio murmured. “He say anything?”

“He just screamed,” Iris said quietly. The bed dipped under Gladio's weight. “What are you going to do, Gladdy?”

“Take him back to Lestallum,” Gladio said. “Keep an eye on him.”

“I meant about all this other stuff,” Iris said. “The drinking and everything.”

Gladio sighed.

“I don't know.”

“Well, you better figure it out,” Iris said. “Otherwise, he's not going to be around when Noct comes back.”

“I can't make him want to get better, Iris,” Gladio said. “I can't force him to talk to me. I tried. More than once. He doesn't want our help.”

“Try again!” she shouted. 

“Why are you yelling at me?” Gladio said.

“Because it sounds like you gave up on him.”

Prompto opened his eyes.

“No, I haven't,” Gladio said. “He gave up on himself.”

That might have been the first really true thing Prompto had heard in a while. Prompto gave up on himself.

And yet, he didn't want to die. He just didn't want to live in this world, or inside his own fucked-up head anymore.

“What about you, Iris?” Gladio asked. “You okay?”

“I'll be okay,” she said. “Cor took care of the body already, so...”

The body. His body. He'd been buried and forgotten beneath the pile of blankets. She'd buried him. Not Cor.

“You wanna come back to Lestallum with me?” Gladio asked.

“I'm good,” she said. “Cor needs me here.”

“You change your mind, you know you're always welcome to crash with me an' Iggy. Any time,” Gladio said. “You got his things together already?”

Prompto shut out the rest. Cor's voice mingled with the others, but they all sounded muffled, like they were speaking to him underwater.

Arms lifted him. He was enveloped in the smell of Gladio's aftershave and wood smoke, melted candle wax, dust. He didn't want Gladio to touch him, just in case he wasn't really Gladio.

Memory came and went. His organs shut down, one by one until all was quiet and blissful inside his head and he watched the sunlight shimmer on the surface of a lake through the lens of his camera.

* * *

 

He barely remembered the trip to Lestallum. The cab of the truck was dark and warm, blankets tucked tight around his body. He could still feel the brush of Iris' lips against his forehead, her fingers in his hair, saying goodbye.

The radio was on to the news. That was the first thing he was aware of as he lay on the bench seat behind Gladio. Some voices he recognized. Dave with the safety report and something about hunters tags. Sania with updates on her research, daemons, infection. Other voices he didn't know. It was all gibberish anyway. Sounds that blended together into a dull roar. Background noise.

Gladio cracked the window just enough to circulate the air. It smelled of death but cooled the fever in his cheeks and dried the moisture in his sweaty hair.

He slept.

When he woke again, it was to the lights of Lestallum, to the sound of bass-heavy music and shouts and laughter, the engine idling beneath him. The truck stopped, the engine cut off. He curled into a ball as Gladio tugged him from the back seat and set him on his feet.

He walked, on autopilot, the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders, Gladio's hand on his waist.

Gladio guided him down an alley and through a door, up a set of stairs and into a warmly lit room that smelled of bakery sweets and coffee. Soft jazz played from the small radio on the table.

“Damn, Iggy. Looks like you made enough to feed the whole city.”

“It's been a long day,” Ignis said defensively. “Are you complaining?”

“Hell no,” Gladio said. "Worse things you could do besides stress-bake."

“Is Prompto with you?” Ignis asked.

“Yeah. I got him.”

“Hey, Iggy,” Prompto said in a cracked, broken voice. “Lookin' good, buddy.”

Ignis stepped around the pass-through and laid a flour-smeared apron aside. He held out a hand until he found Prompto. Light fingers brushed over the blanket to ensure he was really there, and still in one piece.

“I've been so worried,” Ignis said.

Scar tissue, shiny in the warm light, held Prompto's attention. A dusting of flour on Iggy's cheek. He'd done something different with his hair.

“You were worried about me?”

_“Tell me, Noct. Were you worried about me?”_

“Of course I was,” Ignis said. “You're family.”

_“What kind of question is that?”_

Family.

Ignis laid his hands on Prompto's shoulders. Pulled Prompto into a tight embrace and held on.

Prompto stood there, unbending, rigid, unable to hug him back, but he didn't fight it, either. He laid his head against Ignis' shoulder, dry-eyed and numb, but also glad to be touched by someone who didn't want anything from him.

“I've made green curry soup,” Ignis said. “I assume it's still a favorite?”

Ignis guided him to the table and pushed him into a chair. Prompto obediently sat. Gladio shed his leather jacket and placed three bowls on the table. A basket of fresh baked bread drizzled with butter.

For a second, Prompto could smell campfire and earth. Heard Noctis' laughter and the sizzle of meat cooking on the camp stove. Hot chocolate with marshmallows.

“Please,” Ignis said. “I've made plenty.”

Prompto lifted the spoon from the bowl. Let the flavors of lemongrass, ginger, basil, hot pepper, and coconut linger on his tongue.

 _Gods_.

It was corny, but it tasted like...

He took a second bite and something exploded in his chest. The spoon dropped back into the bowl, metal against cheap china. A sob burst out of him.

It tasted like home. Like some place he'd taken for granted, but somewhere he belonged.

All the tears he hadn't cried the last three years came flooding out, all at once, and he felt it, full force. Not anger or self-loathing, but pure, bitter sorrow for the Prompto that had been lost somewhere in Zegnautus Keep.

“Is it the soup?” Ignis asked softly. “Too much ginger, perhaps?”

Bless Ignis. For giving him a way out. For giving him an excuse for his tears. For making a self-deprecating joke in the midst of his meltdown.

It wasn't the soup. It was the warmth of this welcome. The reminder of what he'd forgotten. Gladio allowed him to keep the blanket without teasing him for it. Ignis prepared his favorite comfort food. No questions. No judgment.

But he couldn't stop crying. He hunched forward and hid his face in the blanket, a sniveling, pathetic mess of snot and tears so wretched it hurt all the way down to his groin. No way to stop the wails and whimpers and moans and he didn't try.

Gladio's hand rested on the back of his neck and massaged gently. Iggy's fingers brushed through his dirty, tangled bangs.

 _Family_.

“Let it out,” Gladio said. “You'll feel better.”

He sobbed himself hoarse, curled up on the chair. Screamed into his knees until he lost his voice. All the while, they said nothing, but maintained contact, blessed, comforting contact.

Prompto bawled until he ran dry, but even then, he stayed hidden. He didn't want to see their faces. He didn't want them to see just how ruined he was.

“I'm sorry,” he said into his knees. “I'm sorry I'm such a mess.”

“It's alright,” Gladio said. “We all have our moments. Right Igs?”

“Indeed.” Ignis' hand lifted away from Prompto's hair. Touched his shoulder. “Perhaps we should save the soup for later.”

Prompto lifted his head but kept his face turned toward the floor.

“I want it.”

“Then would you allow me to warm it for you?”

Prompto nodded.

“I got this, Iggy,” Gladio said.

Prompto sniffled into his knees. They were being so goddamned _nice_ to him. Did he deserve that, after he'd pushed them away, ignored their calls, snapped on them? Did he deserve their kindness?

No. He didn't deserve any of it. Not after the way he'd behaved.

Gladio returned to the table with a warm bowl and a big glass of water. Prompto wished it was booze, but after wrenching every last bit of spare moisture from his body, his insides were sandblasted, as parched as the desert, full of tumbleweeds. He drank the water down. Gladio brought more.

He savored the soup in silence, not daring to meet their eyes. Ignis couldn't see him, but that didn't matter. He was a perceptive man. He knew the score.

They both did. They had for a long time. Trying to hide it from them all these years was a wasted effort. Gladio had probably known all along.

He ate a second bowl, and some bread that was so light and fluffy, it practically melted in his mouth and brought on a fresh round of tears.

Had he really tasted anything these last three years? Besides cum and liquor? He couldn't recall anything that stood out.

He remembered this feeling, though. Finding comfort in food. Being so hungry, he wanted to eat everything, even though he hated the way he looked in the mirror. All those extra pounds that no one loved. All that hurt smothered in carbs and fried food.

With a sigh, he set down the slice of bread and got up. From his bag, he withdrew the remaining bottle of Hunter's Hooch, opened it and took a long swallow.

“The hell are you doing?” Gladio asked. He stood up and reached for the bottle. “Hand it over.”

Prompto shed the blanket and went out onto the small patio that overlooked the square, clutching the bottle like his life depended on it. Down below, the street swarmed with refugees and hunters and Glaives and Crownsguard, the ladies from the power plant, idle men playing dice. Lives being lived in darkness and sorrow and pain.

“Prompto.”

Prompto wiped limp strands of hair from his sweaty, tear-stained face.

“I can't live like this,” he said.

“Then give me the bottle.”

“You want me to talk?” Prompto said. “Then let me have this, okay? It's the only way I'm gonna get through this, dude. If you still want to hear it.”

Gladio drifted out onto the patio and claimed the seat furthest away.

“Fine, but you stop tomorrow. I'm pouring whatever's left down the drain.”

Prompto nodded and took a drink. He didn't plan for there to be any left tomorrow.

Ignis appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

“Everything alright?”

“We're good,” Prompto said. “Come have a drink with us, buddy.”

Ignis sat next to Gladio, the corners of his mouth turned downward and his posture stiff.

Prompto drank.

“You plan to share that, or what?” Gladio asked.

Prompto handed off the bottle. Gladio took a swallow. Spit it out.

“The hell is that?” Gladio complained. “Tastes like ass.”

Prompto laughed at the overcast sky gone a murky orange in the glow of the street lights. There were bats tonight, circling the lamp posts where the moths bashed themselves against glass again and again, unaware a worse fate awaited them just beyond the glow of their perceived heaven.

What a sad fate. Singe their wings and break themselves against the warmth of a false sun, or become prey. A choice between death or living out the remainder of their lives damaged and broken.

“Something you're familiar with, big guy?” Prompto asked.

Gladio grunted and passed the bottle to Ignis. Ignis accepted it, laid a hand to Gladio's thigh and smelled the mouth of the bottle.

“Funny,” Gladio said. “Have a seat.”

Prompto didn't. He stayed where he was and watched people move through the square on their way to wherever they were going. He watched the bats, the moths, the moonless, starless sky.  The silence stretched out to infinity while Prompto debated about where to start. What to say. If there even was anything to say anymore except sorry.

He closed his eyes, his hands clamped tight around the iron rail. The night smelled of rotting garbage. Someone needed to do something about that. It couldn't be healthy to live with all this filth.

“I used to over-eat when I was a kid,” he said after a while. “Anytime I felt bad about myself. Anytime I was lonely. Anytime I couldn't deal with stuff... Food made made me forget I was sad or lonely for a while.”

Prompto bit his lip. Spit it out. Closed his eyes and tried to breathe.

“It felt good in the moment, you know? But I hated myself for it,” he said. “Every time I looked in the mirror, here was this overweight little nerd that took pictures of cats and birds and didn't talk to anyone. They sure as hell didn't talk to me... Except to call me names.”

He sighed and watched Ignis lift the bottle of liquor to his lips. Ignis grimaced, but he drank it. Neither said anything.

“This... It's a lot like that,” he said. “I just want to stop feeling like... I don't know, like I'm drowning, or...”

How the hell did he explain this?

“I don't know how to stop this time,” he said. “I was motivated to stop overeating, and it wasn't just because I thought Noctis wouldn't be my friend if I was overweight. I wanted to feel better about myself first, you know? I didn't like what I saw in the mirror, so I did something about it.”

“You should be proud,” Gladio said. “It ain't easy doing something like that on your own, you know.”

“I know,” Prompto said. He remembered well how hard it was to make himself get of bed every morning and run. Especially in the beginning. “I just... I don't think I have that kind of determination anymore.”

Prompto shook his head at the night sky. Tears escaped the corners of his eyes. For a second, he was in the lake with Noctis, making out like horny teenagers. He wanted to stay there, in that fantasy, but it wasn't real. Like so many other moments of pure escapism, moments he wasn't sure if Ardyn put there or if it was a product of his wounded psyche trying to cope.

“I mean maybe... back then, I just traded one addiction for another,” he said. “I got kinda obsessed with running and food... you know, calories and weight... I was so afraid of getting big again. I got hung up on all that stuff and it stopped feeling good to look in the mirror and see how far I'd come.”

He was sure Ignis remembered all the half finished meals and how he refused dessert after a carbohydrate heavy supper.

“I don't know if you grasp how much strength it takes to make such a drastic lifestyle change without any moral support," Ignis said. "It's quite difficult to do on your own, especially for a child who clearly had no supervision or guidance when it came to healthy choices....”

Prompto pinched the bridge of his nose. Wiped his eyes. Sniffled.

It felt good to hear. From Ignis, of all people. Ignis, who was the strongest person Prompto knew. But they weren't really getting it.

“I have a habit of making bad choices because it feels good and it's easier than dealing.”

“And yet you overcame it,” Ignis said.

“I don't know if I can this time,” Prompto said. “I don't know how.”

“Easy. You let us help you,” Gladio said.

Prompto reclaimed the bottle. He looked into the cloudy liquid and inhaled the scent of pure grain alcohol, flavored with what he could only assume were chocobo droppings.

“I'm not going to tell you guys everything,” he said. “I don't think I can.”

“You don't have to. Just whatever you need to get off your chest.”

Prompto turned around and faced them. Ignis looked heartbroken. Gladio's eyes, a little misty. His own eyes stung from too much crying already, but seeing Gladio emotional nearly pushed Prompto back over the edge.

“He did everything you guys suspect and worse,” Prompto said. “I've done worse to myself since then.”

His chest got tight. His throat ached. He took a deep breath. Swallowed around the lump in his throat.

“The last time...” he began and stopped. Lost his voice. “Gods, I can't even say it.”

“It's all right,” Ignis said. “We can stop here if you like.”

Prompto shook his head. If he didn't say it now, he would never say it.

“It was three... maybe four times...” he said, his voice breaking, fading, going hoarse. “The last time...”

The words wouldn't come out. He couldn't tell them. Not that. Not that, not ever. He gagged on the truth he couldn't say out loud. He choked on it, started to hyperventilate.

“I swear I didn't want to.”

The legs of a chair scraped on the stone floor. An arm slipped around his shoulders. He pressed his face into the heels of his hands, his body shaking with soundless sobs until he was drawn into Gladio's thick arms. Ignis rubbed his back like he was a child who'd woken from a nightmare about the boogieman.

His boogieman was real. So very real.

“Of course you didn't,” Ignis said. "Of course not."

“Noct's not gonna forgive me for it, ever,” Prompto bawled. “He's gonna hate me.”

“There's nothing to forgive, Prompto,” Ignis said. “You did nothing wrong.”

Prompto cried harder.

“I fucked him,” he bawled. “After everything that happened, I fucked him and I didn't tell the truth and he's going to hate me....”

Ignis hand paused. Gladio tensed.

_Here it comes._

Prompto struggled to get his tears and his breathing back under control.

“You and Noct? When did this happen?” Gladio asked.

“The dorm,” Prompto said, still gasping for breath. “When we stopped to rest. You guys went on patrol... and... shit. I didn't mean for that to happen either, but I just wanted something good after all that... I just wanted to feel like... I wanted him to know I loved him.”

There was a long silence. So long that Prompto unburied his face from his hands and looked at one, then the other. Ignis looked troubled. Gladio confused.

“What?” he asked.

“We didn't go on patrol,” Ignis said. “We stepped out for a moment, but not long enough for anything much to happen.”

“No,” Prompto said. “I took a shower and you guys were gone and it was just me and Noct....”

Gladio sighed and let Prompto go. He reached for the abandoned bottle of booze and took a swallow.

“You checked out while you were in the shower,” Gladio said. “Me and Iggy had to go in there and get you.”

“No.”

“We put you to bed,” Gladio said. “Cried in your sleep, but you slept alone. We were all afraid to touch you.”

Prompto's lungs deflated. His heart stopped beating. His skin grew cold and clammy.

“Iggy?” Prompto whispered.

The corners of Ignis' mouth turned downward. He bowed his head.

“Yes. It's true.”

Fuck.

The one thing that had kept him afloat all this time was just another mindfuck or an escapist fantasy, and his memories were so muddled with both, he wasn't sure which it was.

The one pure, untainted moment in the midst of all of this bullshit was nothing more than a dream.

It hit him with the force of a meteor strike, his body and mind obliterated and turned to ash in a split second.

There was no him and Noct.

There never had been.

He turned his head, gripped the iron bars, and vomited off the edge of the patio.

* * *

 

Prompto remembered nothing for days after that. Not running barefoot from the apartment with the taste of bile still in his mouth or wedging himself between some crates in a forgotten, garbage filled alley at the edge of town until he could breathe again, and not winding up black-out drunk in bed with a pair of refugees from Galhad.

No, he was lost somewhere in his head, drowning over and over again, replaying every second of that false memory in search of glitches or signs that it wasn't real. Thinking of cracker crumbs in the bed because Noctis needed a late night snack. How they'd stuck to his skin and no amount of shaking the linens could get rid of them. And getting himself off in hotel showers to fantasies about Noct finally seeing him as something more than a friend.

It was Aranea that broke him from the extended bender, as he limped out of someone's apartment, half dressed, stinking of alcohol and sex, belt buckle and zipper still undone, one boot on, the other clutched to his chest along with his shirt. Something about the look on her face snapped him back into the world, but he was too drunk to greet her properly.

“Gods, you look like you got sucked down the drain and the sewer spat you back out,” she said. She reached forward and peeled back one of his eyelids. “You smell like it, too.”

Prompto laughed. Then started to cry. Stumbled into the wall and held onto his boot with both arms.

“Your friends have been looking for you, you know,” she said. “Bailing you out is starting to feel like a full time gig.”

He laughed and bawled at the same time. He didn't want a bail-out.

“How much are they paying you?”

“I'm doing this out of the kindness of my heart, shortcake,” she said.

“Ignis made you brownies, didn't he?” Prompto slurred. “Don't lie.”

“That's between me and Specs, kid,” she said, “but I'm not gonna say I wouldn't accept brownies as a form of payment.”

Prompto laughed and hugged his boot tighter.

“Man...” he said, then forgot what he was going to say. “Shit, dude.”

Aranea heaved a sigh and grabbed his wrist.

“Get up.”

Prompto resisted.

“Do we really have to do this again?” she asked. “Get your ass up or I'm leaving you here.”

“Would you really?” he asked. “Or is that, you know, just the tough girl act?”

“Oh, that's cute,” she said. “You wanna try me?”

“I don't care,” he said tiredly. “Leave. I'm good.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” she said. She took out her phone. “Hey Specs. I found him... yeah, looks like it. Send the Meathead to come get him. Oh. Right. Yeah, no problem.”

Prompto closed his eyes. He thought about getting up and running away again, but he was so tired. Of everything. Most of all, himself.

Aranea didn't leave. She sat down in the filth beside him, took the boot away and crammed his foot into it.

“Why are you doing this to yourself, kid?” she asked. “Is it really that bad?”

“I'd rather be scourged,” he muttered. “At least that would make sense.”

“A lot of shit doesn't make sense, but shit happens,” she said. “How about you deal with it instead committing passive-aggressive suicide? Where the hell is the kid that fought so hard to make it back to his friends?”

“Dead,” Prompto slurred. “R-I-P. Ripped, good buddy. Made like a tree and left.”

He spelled out the letters DEAD in the air. Aranea smacked his hand down.

“Gimmie a break,” she said. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, get off your ass, and start fighting.”

“Not gonna work. I know your tricks. You're not foolin' me.”

Aranea gave a little laugh. Patted him on the head like he was a dog.

“I bet you still got a little fight left in you,” she said. “How about using it to dig yourself out instead of burying it?”

“Well aren't you just full of helpful one-liners?” He closed his eyes. Sighed. “You read that in a self-help manual?”

She tied his bootlaces. Patted his leg.

“Yeah. It's right after the part about not being a little shit to people who are trying to help you,” she said. “You're above this.”

“No, I'm really not.”

“Gods,” she said. “Spare me.”

Prompto laughed again, but to his ears, the sound distorted, like a laugh-track played in slow motion. His head was spinning. Thought he might either puke or pass out. He opened his eyes and got a good view of her cleavage.

“Always thought you had great tits. And freckles,” he slurred. “Your shoes are scary, though.”

Aranea laughed. “Thanks, kid.”

His head lolled onto her shoulder. He couldn't keep his eyes open. She slung an arm around him and lifted him to his feet.

“You're gonna be alright, blondie,” she said.

“Am I?”

“Sure, so long as you never mention my tits again,” she said. “I'm starting to feel like your big sister or something, and that just makes it extra creepy.”

Prompto sighed. Stifled a yawn.

“I always wanted a big sister.”

“Don't tell anyone I said that,” she said. “That's between you and me.”

“Won't tell a soul, sis.”

“Come on. Let's get you home.”

Home sounded great. But home was gone. Home had never really been home.

Home was Gladio's baritone laugh and motivational bullying. The smell of Ebony and baked goods. Spicy food. Noctis' sleepy eyes and perpetual melancholy. Marathon games of King's Knight.

It was a place he didn't think he'd ever find again.

But Iggy was waiting when Aranea dragged him into the apartment, a mug of hot chocolate with Prompto's name on it.  And it tasted exactly like he belonged there.  


	11. Purge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost chose not to continue this. Things have not been good for a few months, tbh. Between the asshole on Tumblr who filled my ask box with vile bullshit that attacked this story, said hateful things about my mental illness, told me I was disgusting, to go kill myself, etc, and the actual hurricane that left me without a place to live, I didn't see the point of picking it back up. 
> 
> And yet.... here I am. Because writing gets me through shit. I'm dealing with it. 
> 
> Deleting my tumblr account helped, I guess. There wasn't much point in being on, and aside from maybe 3 kind people who tried to include me, I was mostly invisible and it wasn't like I had anything to contribute. It's not a healthy place for someone like me, and even though I miss the amazing fan art, screen shots and meta stuff, I'm not sorry I left. It's not a stress I needed, but it was one I had the power to remove from my life. 
> 
> On that note, suicide mentions ahead.

 

 _Before_...

“I'm afraid I must leave you,” Ardyn said.

Metal scraped against metal and Prompto flinched in anticipation of the next blow, the next assault, the next fault-line to crack wide open.

It didn't come.

Ardyn, as naked as Prompto was, stood in the center of the room, both ghastly and beautiful in the harsh yellow light. Long, jagged scars crossed his chest and arms, ragged tears that must have taken a while to heal. Like the claw marks of some huge beast, but their number tenfold.

Prompto didn't want to look, but he couldn't look anywhere else. His shame and humiliation should have driven him to seek out other points of interest in the room. It should have left him unable to meet Ardyn's eye, but _Gods_ why had this happened, and what did any of it even mean?

So, he searched for reasons to forgive, reasons to explain, any excuse for this cruelty Ardyn inflicted on him. There had to be more than just a taste for sadism and revenge. More than Noct and the ring and the crystal. There was something about Prompto, specifically, that set him off. No one could be this filled with hate or this inclined to inflict pain on someone who had done nothing to him.

“Who?” Prompto asked. His teeth chattered. “What happened? The scars?”

If he thought he'd find the answers in his captor, he was mistaken. A split second of raw, unfiltered anguish, and then pure and blinding rage.

Black tears spilled from Ardyn's eyes. His skin faded to the color of a corpse. Those strangely hued eyes turned a bright, glowing gold and the room filled with the scent of miasma and decay.

He closed his eyes. He wished he hadn't asked. He shouldn't have said anything, but he was so desperate to reach him, to understand, he'd spoken without thinking. As usual, it got him into trouble.

A hand clamped around his wrist. Locked it in place above his head. Then the other wrist.

Prompto didn't fight. Resignation stole the last of his desire to resist. It purged him of anything resembling the boy he was before Noct pushed him off the train. He wasn't Prompto anymore. He wasn't anything but a trembling mouse cornered by a starving cat. Nowhere to run, no one to come to his aid in his time of need.

“I have an urgent errand I must attend to,” Ardyn said. “But I'll leave our friends behind to keep you company.”

Friends.

Whether he meant the daemons or the MT's, it didn't matter. Prompto was not in the company of friends. He wasn't so sure he'd ever find himself in the company of friends again.

He'd seen pictures once of a storm ravaged beach. Hundred foot pines snapped in half. Phone poles and street signs ripped away from their concrete foundations. Roofs of seaside businesses torn free, houses leveled. The streets littered with the sum total of people's lives. Utter devastation.

This.

This felt like the aftermath of a hurricane. That calm, quiet time where not even a gentle breeze curdled around the edges of broken windows. That time when people were still holding their collective breaths, ducking their heads in anticipation of worse yet to come.

The thought of worse still to come crippled him. Sent him spinning back into fantasy. Back to a time when he hadn't made some irrevocable pact with the devil in order to live.

He could still feel it. He could still feel _him_. What he'd left behind.

It made him sick. Heartsick. Sick to his stomach. Sick in the head. He thought of parasites, infection, scourge. Wanted to immerse himself in bleach and scrub till his skin peeled away.

Ardyn had gotten what he wanted, he'd had more than his share of fun. And then some. If he was to be believed, Prompto would return to Noctis completely ruined, shamed and tainted by those few moments of mindless pleasure, his total surrender.

All because he couldn't take anymore. He wasn't strong enough to withstand the hurricane force winds.

His past no longer seemed so horrifying in comparison, though. Small potatoes, next to this.

He wasn't aware that Ardyn was still there until an open palm smashed against the side of his face. Flickers of pain raced along nerve endings and his nose began to throb again.

“You will acknowledge me,” Ardyn said.

_Or what? What else can he do besides kill me?_

“ _Yes, Ardyn_ ,” Ardyn sing-songed.

“Y-yes,” Prompto rasped. “Ardyn.”

“Now, as I was saying, there is a great deal for me still to do before your friends arrive. I must prepare,” Ardyn said. “I'm sure you understand.”

Still smarting from the blow, Prompto failed to respond. A hand struck the other side of his face.

Prompto howled this time, his eyes scrunching closed ahead of tears.

Something cold pressed against his breastbone. A loud click shattered the silence. He opened his eyes.

His Lionheart, in Ardyn's hand. The barrel above his heart.

It was almost a relief.

Pull the trigger. One shot. Finish this.

 _Please_.

He closed his eyes and waited for the blast of gunfire, for the heat of the bullet tearing through flesh and bone, for his racing heart to be obliterated in an instant.

Nothing.

Ardyn lifted the gun away, twirled it around his finger, and it vanished into thin air.

Not the first time Prompto had seen Ardyn do this. Not the only thing he could do, either. Appear out of nowhere. Manifest as someone he was not.

Prompto struggled to put the pieces together, the answer right in front of him, but physical and mental exhaustion prevented him from giving it a name.

“I'll be back soon, my pet,” Ardyn purred. “Now, if you'll excuse me.”

“Yes, Ardyn,” Prompto murmured.

He closed his eyes at the sound of the cell locking shut. Bone tired but too afraid to sleep, he listened to the skittering daemon just outside the door. It wanted in, but it feared the light without Ardyn there to lend it strength. Just enough light to keep it from slipping through the bars. Prompto, just enough out of reach to be safe. For now.

The MT's didn't move. Didn't make a sound.

They were not alive except for the core affixed right where a man's heart would be. Whatever was in there, parasites, miasma, the degraded souls of his brothers, whatever it was, could not be called dead. They must have had at least some consciousness, even trapped inside magitek technology the way they were. Prompto had heard their muffled screams when slain on the battlefield. He'd seen them rip their own cores out.

Better to go out on their own terms than to be cut down? Better to self destruct than fail?

_What if...?_

Prompto had once heard a story about a prisoner of war, an Imperial maybe, or maybe Lucian? Whichever, the soldier chose not to allow his captors to torture him, and he bit his own tongue off, bled to death, rather than suffer the indignity of their abuse.

He rubbed the tip of his tongue along the bottom row of his teeth thoughtfully.

How far back would he have to bite, and how hard?

He stuck his tongue out as far as it would go. Experimented with pressure, the placement of his teeth, the strain in his aching jaw. Worked up the courage to bite down. If he did it right, in less than ten minutes, all this would go away.

No more shame or guilt or worries that he wasn't a person, no fears that he would be turned away once Noct knew what he was and what he did to stay alive. It would be over. That would be it. Better dead than have to explain.

He increased the pressure, feeling the bite of his teeth into the tender underside of his tongue and his fists clenched above his head. Eyes closed, holding his breath.

_Do it, you chickenshit. Do it._

But there was Noct's face in his mind, bathed in the red of the hotel sign behind him, the orange of the street lights below, smiling. Understanding. Expressing a wish that Prompto had been brave enough to befriend him sooner.

Prompto was a coward. He'd always been a coward. Always _would_ be a coward.

He didn't want to die. No matter what happened next, no matter what, he wanted to live, and goddammit, even if it meant Noctis never spoke to him again, even if he meant every single word he'd said on the train, Prompto wanted to live.

With a shuddering breath, he released his tongue and tasted the salty bead of blood where his incisor broke the skin.

His blood was as red as anyone else's. His heart and lungs served the same function. He had dreams for the future, wants and wishes and desires. He loved his friends, wanted to be loved in return. Enjoyed the burn of hot peppers on his tongue, laughed, got his feelings hurt, felt pride in a well taken photograph, wished for all the world there was a light at the end of this tunnel.

Tears burned his eyes and ran in hot streams down the sides of his face, searing his skin in the cold.

Out in the hall, the daemon let out a skittery titter that might have been laughter and scraped claws along the bars.

Gods.

It had to be over soon.

Right?

 

 

* * *

 

 

Hot chocolate wouldn't magically fix everything. Like the pastries and greasy fries he'd used as a salve as a kid, the relief would only be temporary. But it helped for a while. The comfort and warmth of this indulgence spread through Prompto's chest and into his stomach to chase away the sickly bile of alcohol and lack of food.

Even better that Ignis had spiced it with a pinch of Leide pepper, and raising the bar on what Prompto considered _good_ hot chocolate.

“Would you like more?” Ignis asked when he checked the mug and found it empty. “I don't mind making another.”

“I'm good,” Prompto said distantly. “Thanks.”

“If you change your mind.”

Aranea leaned against the counter in the kitchen, licking glaze from her fingers as she eyed the plate of cinnamon rolls beside her. Prompto watched her watch Ignis through intoxication-blurred eyes as Ignis moved with ease through the apartment, as though he still had his sight.

“This is pretty good, Four-eyes,” Aranea said.

Prompto winced. _Four-eyes_ might have been appropriate and even a little funny before, but now it sounded cruel.

“Better than the last?” Ignis asked.

“Let me put it this way: If you were straight, you'd already be naked and tied to the bed.”

Ignis chuckled softly and his cheeks colored.

“I do believe that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me, Aranea.”

“Don't let it go to your head.”

“I'll try not to.”

Aranea grunted through a mouthful of bread. Prompto closed his eyes and dropped his head to the table.

From the moment Prompto hit the ground beside a moving train until now, he hadn't thought much about Ignis' personal struggle or how far he'd come since Altissia. Perfect vision had been important to Ignis. To lose it must have been devastating. Overcoming it must have seemed insurmountable. Yet there he was, doing his best to pick up the pieces and move on.

They'd all been hurt along the way. They'd all lost what was most important to them because of the Empire and Ardyn. Prompto firmly believed that Ardyn anticipated the intensity of Ignis' dedication to Noctis and manipulated him into using the ring. Ardyn had backed him into a corner, the way Prompto heard it. Gave him no choice. Even if Ignis would disagree and say he did it of his own free will, Prompto was more aware than any of them that Ardyn was a master puppeteer, and he was the one pulling all their strings.

They'd all lost something because of him. They'd all lost family and loved ones when Insomnia fell. They'd lost their homes, their country, and their King. Countless others had lost everything that mattered them.

And here Prompto was, wallowing in a cesspool of stagnant self-hatred, feeling sorry for himself while everyone else seemed to have dusted themselves off and got on with it.

“I gotta take off,” Aranea said. “Was supposed to meet up with the guys an hour ago.”

“Apologies for holding you up,” Ignis said.

“No biggie,” she said. “Thanks for the cinnamon rolls.”

“My pleasure,” Ignis said. “And you have my gratitude for...”

Ignis inclined his head toward Prompto. Neither said anything for a minute.

“... the kid deserves better,” Aranea said softly. “Take care of him, alright?”

“I'll do my best.”

“Yeah,” Aranea said. “See you around, Four-Eyes.”

“Farewell, Lady A.”

_The kid deserves better._

He got exactly what he deserved. Didn't he?

**...You are an imperfect copy of a deeply flawed man.**

**...How precious of you to believe you have a soul.**

Prompto thought he was going to be sick. He stood up and lurched toward the bedroom in search of the bath as the front door clicked shut.

There was only one bed in here. King-sized to accommodate Gladio's massive body, a nightstand on each side bearing mementos belonging to two distinctly different people. A pile of fantasy novels on Gladio's side. A small wooden figure of Carbuncle on the other that belonged to Noctis and must have had some sentimental value to Ignis.

Why it never occurred to him, Prompto would never know. They were careful. Never really let on there was more to it than a close friendship. It made sense. A lot of sense, in hindsight.

He had about ten seconds to think about that before dizziness overtook him, and he hurled himself through the bathroom door just in time to save the carpet. On his knees he vomited into the toilet, voiding everything in his stomach, and what came up reminded him of Ardyn's melting face, of the daemons bleeding black mucus from their eyes.

Again and again, he retched, even after there was nothing left to come up, his body insisted there was more. It hurt his ribs and burned his throat, and saliva spilled from his slack lips. His skin was slick with perspiration and he shivered with both fever and chill.

Once purged, and sure there would be no more, Prompto slumped over against the old claw-footed tub beside the toilet and rested his head against his knees.

The faucet at the sink came on, then Ignis knelt beside him, hands gingerly patting Prompto's arm and shoulder until he found his face. A wet washcloth smoothed over his forehead and down his cheeks, wiped the film of vomit from his lips and nose and chin.

He wasn't drunk anymore, but he wished he was. That would kill the tight ball of pain growing in his chest.

“The worst is over, Prompto,” Ignis said. “I promise.”

Was it? How much farther could he fall? Was there a rock bottom or would he just keep spiraling down into a hell full of fresh, new torments with each new depth he reached?

Ignis wedged himself into the space beside Prompto and looped an arm around his shoulders. Prompto closed his eyes and shut out the remembered sensation of a steel blade sliding down his spine, the memory of how beautiful Ignis was without clothes on. Tears leaked from his eyes and his body went slack as Ignis drew him into a half embrace.

“I'm sorry,” Prompto said. “I just... sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” Ignis said.

They sat there so long, Prompto's ass and legs grew numb. He didn't cry, exactly, but screamed silently into his knees until he let out a low, broken wail more like that of a wounded beast than a man.

“Iggy,” he bawled. “I don't want to die.”

The hand that stroked his hair paused for a second, then resumed as Ignis assured him, “Of course you don't.”

“ _Help_ me.”

Ignis' grip on him grew tighter, and Prompto's tears ran anew when he felt Iggy lay a cheek against his filthy hair.

“Of course,” Ignis said. “We'll help any way we can.”

Gradually, the shivering subsided and the knot in Prompto's stomach unclenched. He could smell days of filth and degradation on his skin and wondered how Ignis could stand to be so close.

“How about a bath?” Ignis asked.

Prompto nodded and closed his eyes at the sound of the tap coming on, the steady thrum of water against the porcelain tub, the scent of something spicy and masculine wafting up from the steam.

Ignis helped him to his feet and Prompto struggled to take off his shirt. His arms tangled in the fabric and he gave up, leaned against the wall and sighed.

As if he was a three-year-old incapable of caring for himself, Ignis dutifully undressed him, pausing when only the dirty cactuar print underwear remained, as if asking for permission. Prompto's cheeks blazed and he covered his face in shame, unable to help or do anything but let Iggy slide the foul fabric down his legs.

Ignis couldn't see him, and that was a small mercy, but it didn't soften the blow to Prompto's wounded pride. How pathetic. He really _was_ useless.

Prompto swallowed hard and blinked back fresh tears when Ignis' hand brushed over his hair and dropped firmly against his shoulder.

“What if... what if I liked it Iggy?”

Ignis paled and his lips parted. Prompto regretted saying it. He hadn't meant to ask.

“Are you saying it was consensual?”

Prompto bit his lip. Closed his eyes. Shivered at the memory of how good it had felt to just give in and stop fighting. The relief of not giving a shit anymore.

“Maybe the last time was...” he murmured. “I guess.”

“You guess?” Ignis asked. He struggled to keep his face passive. “You were his hostage at the time.”

“Yeah.”

“One can not consent while under duress,” Ignis said. “No matter what he might have convinced you of otherwise.”

“But...”

His protest died on his lips when Ignis' mouth pressed into a thin line and his jaw tightened. A muscle in Iggy's cheek twitched.

“The body is programmed to respond to sexual stimulation,” Ignis said formally, but through clenched teeth. Both his hands now on Prompto's shoulders. “Even when the contact is unwanted, nature sometimes overrides intellect.”

On some level, Prompto knew this, but it didn't justify everything he'd done.

“Did you invite him to touch you?”

“No.”

“Did he ever give you the option of declining?”

“Yeah...”

“He did?” Ignis, surprised.

“Well, it was that or let the daemons have me,” Prompto sniffled and wiped his eyes. “Maybe I should have chosen that. Maybe I'd be better off.”

“Better off dead, you mean?” Ignis asked.

“Sometimes I wish I was,” Prompto breathed.

“You haven't had... thoughts, have you?”

Prompto nodded, then remembered Ignis couldn't see him.

“...maybe.”

Lately, it was more like every day, but only a couple of times where he seriously considered it.

Ignis sighed and tightened his hold. He leaned his face into Prompto's hair for a second. When he pulled back, there were tears on his cheeks.

“I'm so sorry we failed you, Prompto,” Ignis said. “I should have used a firmer hand in opening the lines of communication.”

“It's okay, Iggy,” Prompto said. “I didn't want to put that on anyone's shoulders.”

“It's too difficult to carry on your own,” Ignis said, almost harshly. “No one expects you to.”

He rubbed Prompto's arms and leaned his face into Prompto's hair again. Prompto was very aware of just how naked he was, and of how close Ignis was.

His heartbeat quickened. He willed himself not to get hard. Thought of the terror, of the sounds the daemon made in the hall as it paced in search of a way in. Thought of the silent MT's with their cores filled with the remains of his brothers.

Thought of drowning, over and over again.

“I'm so ashamed, Iggy...” Prompto said. His voice broke and he started to cry. “I hate myself.”

Ignis' grip became a tight, paternal embrace. The tremor in his belly started up again, the want that could never be satisfied.

“Nevertheless, we care very much about you,” Ignis said against his ear. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. You've done nothing wrong.”

Prompto's laugh was bitter, but buried in Iggy's shoulder. He'd done so much wrong. Everything, really. The last three years were his own fault.

“Now, into the bath,” Ignis said. “You'll be alright on your own?”

“Yeah,” Prompto said and let Ignis go. “I got this.”

“I'll be in the kitchen if you need me,” Ignis said. “If you need help, just ask.”

 

* * *

 

  
Prompto soaked away the stench for as long as the warmth held out. He didn't think about that first encounter with Ardyn but of a time long ago, when he was sixteen, sweating to death, and bored to tears watching Noctis fish in the park on a warm spring afternoon.

He'd stripped down to his boxer shorts and cannon-balled off the dock, ignoring Noct's protests about scaring away the fish. Prompto had just laughed and swam freestyle toward the red and white buoy floating in the middle of the lake. He tagged it and turned onto his back to float beneath the sun's rays, knowing that if he exposed his fair skin too long, his freckles would be even more obvious.

The water was as warm as piss, but it took the edge off the sweltering heat. He floated there, hoping that Noctis would see reason and join him, but when Prompto looked up, Noctis was packing up his fishing gear, his back to the lake.

With a sigh, Prompto returned to the shore and climbed back up to the dock, dripping, to retrieve his clothes.

“Sorry,” Prompto said.

“It's cool,” Noct said. He didn't sound mad. “Nothing was biting anyway.”

“You coulda... joined me, you know. Water's real nice.”

“Yeah. I bet.”

There was a pained look in his eye. Something Prompto didn't understand.

“Did I... do something wrong?”

“Nah,” Noctis said. Cast him a sly glance. “But you just go and do whatever strikes you, don't you?”

“If only, dude,” Prompto said and plopped down on the dock to dry off. “It's just easier when nobody else is around.”

“So I'm nobody?”

“You know what I mean,” Prompto said. He reached over and patted Noctis' shoe. “Not to late for you to take a dip, good buddy.”

“Pass.”

“Oh. Don't know how to swim?” Prompto asked.

“I can swim,” he said and turned his face away. “There's some... _scars_. From the accident. They're not pretty.”

He felt bad. Bad that Noctis had ever been hurt, and bad that he wasn't trusted enough to see them.

“Hey, you don't gotta be embarrassed,” Prompto said. He poked at his stomach. “I've got a ton of stretch marks. See? Stripes!”

The corner of Noctis' mouth hitched up and he threw Prompto's shirt at him.

“Such a nerd.”

“And proud of it, dude,” Prompto said beaming, then his smile fell. “Seriously though, you don't have to be ashamed. You can show me if you want. Or not. No pressure.”

Noctis sat back on his heels and pulled the brim of his hat low over his eyes. Then he stood and unbuckled his belt and pushed the fabric of his jeans down, pulled the hem of his shirt up, and Prompto's eyes went wide at the streaks of puckered scar tissue across his abdomen and thighs. Burn marks, slightly webbed, reddish in some spots, silvery in others.

Prompto was more moved by this show of trust than he was by the scars or what caused them. In that moment, he felt the first real inkling of affection for Noctis that wasn't entirely rooted in brotherhood. The first flash of heat in his groin that wasn't inspired by the porn he watched with headphones in his room at night.

Noct's scars were beautiful. The same way Ignis' were beautiful to him.

Prompto wished his scars were on the outside. Something he could show the world, as if to say he'd survived. All he got was a slightly crooked nose and a small puckered line that his hair hid anyway. Everything else was hidden, where no one could see just how bad it was.

The water had grown cold and he pulled the plug, turned on the shower as hot as it would go to rinse off the suds of whatever scented bath product Ignis had dumped in. He felt better, now that the stench of his bender was gone, the smell of dubious sex off his skin.

He was tired. So very, very tired. He felt like he could sleep for days. Weeks, maybe.

Wrapped in a towel, he emerged from the bath, in search of his bag and some clean clothes. The scent of cooking meat and bread hit him like a wall of nostalgia and he followed its perfume to the kitchen, secured the towel around his waist and watched Ignis push strips of meat around in a frying pan.

“How do you know when it's done?” Prompto asked.

“Experience,” Ignis said. “How do you want your eggs?”

“You don't gotta go to all this trouble, Iggy,” Prompto said.

“You've lost a great deal of weight,” Ignis said. “And I suspect you've been drinking your meals for some time now. If you're to get better, you need to _eat_.”

Prompto sighed. It was an order, not a request. Already, he craved another drink. Not bad enough to walk out and go find some, but that would come sooner rather than later.

“My bag in here somewhere?”

“Over by the couch, where you left it.”

“Thanks.”

Prompto dropped the towel and dressed right there in the living room. Someone had washed his clothes. He could smell the slight floral odor of the washing powder on the fabric.

He ate, savoring the greasy food in a way he hadn't since he was overweight. As if his body was absolutely starved for calories.

Maybe it was.

“You may take the bed if you wish,” Ignis said. “I've got a few hours of study ahead of me and I don't want to keep you awake.”

“What about Gladio?”

“I suspect he'll be late.  If he comes home at all.”

“Oh,” Prompto said. “Hey, about Gladio. When were you planning on telling me you guys were a thing?”

Ignis' smile was sad.

“I'm not certain we are anymore,” Ignis said. “But enough about that. Off to bed with you.”

Sleeping in the bed Ignis and Gladio shared as lovers, knowing the darkness had taken its toll on their relationship made it tough to fall asleep. He thought of all those glimpses he'd caught of them, all the signs he'd missed that in hindsight were so obvious. The two of them sharing a private look, a touch, a pat on the back that lingered a little too long to be friendly, and he hoped they could find that again.

He dreamed of Luna again, in a bloodstained wedding dress. In his hand was Ardyn's knife. Pryna licked the blood from his fingertips, from the blade.

“How delightful, to ruin something so beautiful,” she said.

And Prompto startled awake, alone and in a darkness corrupted by the orange glow of the lights of the square. His teeth chattered and he blinked back the fear, the regret, the guilt. Only to have it driven home by Gladio's voice, low but harsh and angry and clear enough for every word to bleed through the paper thin walls.

“You said no more secrets, Iggy,” Gladio said. “Remember?”

“That was a long time ago.”

“I don't give a shit if it was yesterday. You made me a promise and I held up my end of the bargain,” Gladio said. “I could get over it if it was nothing major, but this is a big fucking deal!”

“I had my reasons,” Ignis said.

“You should have been the one to tell me,” Gladio said. Anguish in his voice. “I had to hear about it from Sania.”

Prompto gripped fist fulls of the sheets. Something big was going down. Like watching a magitek drop-ship get blasted out of the sky.

“Oh? And what does the esteemed professor have to say about it?” Ignis asked snidely “Was she there to comfort you in your grief?”

“Fuck you, Iggy.”

“Was that an offer? Because I must say, it's been quite some time.”

“Goddamnit!” Gladio roared.

“Keep your voice down,” Ignis said. “Prompto is asleep in the other room.”

“Really. In our bed.”

Gladio's tone was flat. Insinuating.

“Regardless of where you and I stand, or what you have learned from Dr. Yeager, Prompto is the more pressing matter at hand,” Ignis said.

“Iggy, don't avoid the subject.”

“I'm not avoiding the subject,” Ignis said. “Noct's fate is not something either of us can change. Believe me, I've exhausted every avenue of possibility in the matter. Prompto cannot wait.”

 _Noct's fate_.

The words slipped through Prompto's mind and he let them go. Not ready to process it. Not able to consider what they meant beyond what he already knew.

“He's considered suicide, Gladio,” Ignis said. "We cannot allow this to continue any longer."

“He told you that?”

“That and much more.” A chair scraped against the cheap vinyl floor. “If you care at all about him, then _help_ me.”

Prompto wanted to scream. Cry. Run. Deny he'd ever said a word. Force the good cheer back into his voice, go down to the bar, give some random dude a blow job for a bottle of something strong and lose the next twelve hours to a haze of sex and feigned celebration. Wished he could open up a flask of fire against his chest, set the bed ablaze and feel the skin melt away from his bones.

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

“I'll help,” Gladio said. “But we're not done talking about this Noct thing.”

Prompto didn't hear Ignis' answer to that, only Gladio's explosive profanity riddled response.

“That's quite enough, Gladiolus,” Ignis said. “Sit down. Lower your voice.”

There was a long and tense silence. Prompto lay rigid on the mattress, counting his breaths until his heartbeat slowed. He sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. Padded to the door.

Opened it.

Gladio leaned against the wall beside the front door, his arms crossed over his chest defensively. Ignis wiped the kitchen counter. Both heads turned toward Prompto.

“I should go,” Prompto said.

“Nonsense,” Ignis said. “I'm sorry we woke you.”

“But I -”

Gladio pushed away from the wall, strode slowly toward him, towering over him, and Prompto took a step back. It was unintentional, but Gladio actually looked hurt.

“You want our help,” Gladio said.

Prompto nodded slowly.

“About fuckin' time,” Gladio said, but he flashed a wry smile. “Pack your shit.”

“Where... are we going?” Prompto asked, picturing the rehab clinics that were popular in Insomnia with the rich and addicted. “Not a hospital or something, right?”

Please, please, not a hospital. He couldn't deal with that. It would be too much like that table Ardyn left him on in the keep.  

“Nope,” Gladio said. “We're going hunting. Just the three of us.”


End file.
